A Business Process Framework and Operations Map for Maritime Autonomous and Unmanned Shipping: MAUSOM

Abstract

Maritime autonomous and unmanned shipping have considerable potential for cost-effective and safe cargo or passenger transport and other maritime operations. Such a manner of shipping will introduce operations chains with new roles and responsibilities. Widescale adoption requires an agreed upon overarching business process framework and operations map. Therefore, this paper introduces MAUSOM: the Maritime Autonomous and Unmanned Shipping Operations Map. Within the maritime industry and research community MAUSOM can be used as a shared blueprint for (re-)designing the operations processes and for defining the supporting functional capabilities. Furthermore, it structures the task allocation process to identify those tasks that can and those that (currently) cannot be allocated to software modules. Furthermore, it enables the definition of the data models needed for the overall system design. The MAUSOM methodology is based on the similar and successful enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) framework approach from the telecommunication sector [11]. MAUSOM uses Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA), which has a long tradition as human factors’ functional decomposition method for engineering maritime operations. This paper describes MAUSOM, the benefits of its standardization and adoption for various stakeholders in the maritime shipping operations chain and addresses its development and deployment governance aspects.