The trends in integrated control and monitoring systems for ships

The last two quarters of the XX century has been marked by the achievements in automation of the marine technique and in control of operations for which this technique has been created. These achievements have confirmed their efficiency and viability. The further progress in this sphere is evident. On-board ship, the integrated control and monitoring systems (ICMS) would undertake and manage all activities associated with the administration of the vessel, including stores and provisions management, work requests, logs, equipment tag outs and calling up and display of diagnostics, drawings and work procedures for engineering repair teams. Because of the growing amount of data and the evolving technology, the operators have to deal with more and faster information streams. The decision-making processes becomes more complicated, the ICMS systems more extensive. Furthermore there is a growing demand for reduction of the number of crewmembers onboard. New technology and new ICMS functions handles these issues. The next paragraphs describe the authors view regarding the trends in ICMS systems