Rescue Decision Support for Marine Wrecked Ships Based on Multi-agent Modeling and Simulation

Maritime search and rescue (MSAR) play an important role in the development of the maritime business. In particular, the rescue for marine wrecked ships is one of the current hot research topics in the field of MSAR. During the response of rescue for marine wrecked ships, one of the key issues is how to develop an optimal rescue plan after an accident occurs. To provide the decision support for the real rescue, this paper proposed a simulation system by using the multi-agent modeling and simulation method. Specifically, the mission scene is modeled for marine wrecked ships including main agents involved, information flows, rescue process. Based on that, a multi-agent model is built considering the main individuals in the rescue mission. Moreover, the evaluation indicator system is established to evaluate various rescue plan by using the analytic hierarchy process. After that, a simulation system is designed with multiple agents and the evaluation model. Finally, a case study is carried out to verify the decision support capability of the simulation system. Three different rescue plans are developed to describe rescue mission scenes and analyses the rescue effectiveness. In the case study, it could be concluded that S-76C++ has better rescue capability than S-76D for marine wrecked ships. By using the proposed models and evaluation system, the simulation system can be served as a decision support system for potential maritime rescue applications.