Agent-based Simulation of Shipboard Manpower & Personnel (M&P) Behaviors

The number of responsibilities a sailor has on a ship is increasing while the amount of time available to complete those tasks is fixed. Continuous overloading of sailors with watchstanding, operations or maintenance duties can lead to degraded performance of both the battlegroups' mission and ship operations, coupled with increasing sailor burnout leading to a decrease in personnel retention. Understanding the effect mission requirements has on the behavior of a sailor and visa-versa how does the sailor behavior impact the mission is of great importance especially given tighter budgets, longer deployments and possibly lower levels of recruitment. The use of computational models that can integrate traditional Operations Research (OR) approaches to ship operations with the sciences of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) represents a potentially significant contribution to support the process of shipboard manpower and personnel system planning. Modeling shipboard personnel systems faces significant challenges before its true vision can be fulfilled. A ship is a complex adaptive system; the number, diversity and connectivity of the elements means the ability to predict dynamic structural behavior through the detailed analysis of individual elements is low. A holistic, network-oriented view of the ships operations is necessary.