Simulation of advanced concepts for damage control

Damage control on board navy ships requires a lot of manpower. On a frigate-sized ship of the Royal Netherlands Navy, up to ninety people can be involved in tasks like fire fighting, battle damage repair and treatment of casualties. In present times this is no longer attainable or affordable. To reduce our manning needs, several tasks will have to be (partially) automated. The level of automation however not only has a significant impact on the damage control organisation and procedures, but also on the design of ships. The key to balancing these ship design parameters, we believe, is ìntegrated simulation approach. To this end the Advanced Concepts for Damage Control (ACDC) simulation framework has recently been developed. This simulation framework integrates a process model for fìre fighting and a physical model for the fire itself. ACDC enables the evaluation of different fire fighting philosophies, varying assignment of humans and systems to fire fighting tasks and modifìed sensor suites and communication systems. Preliminary results demonstrate the potential of ACDC and also illustrate the necessity of simulation in the field of damage control. With ACDC, the usefulness of automated systems can already be assessed in the early ship design phases