A Discussion About the Ship Digital Platform as a Step Forward for Digital Transformation in the Maritime Domain

An amazing technological evolution has characterized the maritime domain in the latest decades, toward a strongly digitized ship, as well as systems and services (energy production and distribution, automation services, connectivity with external assets…). The increment onboard of sensors and actuators, the augmented internal and external ship networking capabilities, the advent of enabling technologies in support of a cloud-oriented approach and the huge pervasiveness of AI create the urgent need of designing an effective ship digital platform, to be considered as a whole with the vessel platform. In the paper, a discussion about the ship digital platform will be proposed, with a high-level perspective, identifying the main functionalities and characteristics. It will be illustrated how the digital platform onboard can support and empower the development and deployment of a ship digital twin, from a life cycle perspective at the functional level.