Next generation maritime workforce planning: Smart scheduling for remote-controlled ships

The evolving landscape of maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS) is marked by prolonged transitions through various autonomy stages, which necessitate changes in crew composition and qualifications. As crew costs represent a significant portion of operational expenses, quantifying the impact of varying autonomy levels on crew sizes and future qualification requirements is becoming increasingly critical for both system providers and ship operators. This paper introduces a framework designed to evaluate crew demand and scheduling onboard and in fleet operation centers (FOC’s) based on operational concepts such as partially or fully remote-controlled vessels. While few existing studies address this topic, they typically focus on specific aspects of ship operations, such as mooring and watchkeeping, often overlooking the overall workload. In contrast, this paper adopts a holistic approach to represent onboard workload and assess crew demand comprehensively. The framework has been applied to current cargo and cruise liners, providing robust decision-making support in manning strategies. Utilizing mathematical modeling and tailored algorithms, it calculates optimal crew demand and schedules specific to individual ships, voyages, and operations. A task-based methodology incorporates in a holistic manner workload, crew qualifications, and voyage-specific factors, while sorting algorithms generate schedules that comply with complex regulations regarding rest hours and organizational maintenance protocols. The algorithms are tailored to take advantage of the problem structure and scale fast. Companies like Carnival Maritime GmbH have leveraged this tool to optimize crew configurations in response to dynamic operational challenges, such as reduced passenger capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic and the reassignment of ships to new routes. This work demonstrates how the framework can be adapted to offer informed decision support in the MASS sector, particularly for remote-controlled vessels. It outlines how existing information systems can delineate tasks and requisite skills for remote operations, facilitating clear identification of responsibilities transitioning to shore, tasks becoming obsolete, or those undergoing transformation. Furthermore, the paper discusses the integrated holistic planning of ship and shore crews, offering substantial decision-making support for automated vessel providers and FOC operators. Finally, it explores the potential of this model to assess the economic impact of varying levels of automation.

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620: Engineering

380: Commerce, Communications, Transport

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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Rizvanolli_2025_J._Phys.__Conf._Ser._3123_012042.pdf

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Next generation maritime workforce planning: Smart scheduling for remote-controlled ships