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The goal of the project is to further the positivist discourse of design by ascertaining whether ethnographic analysis contributes to the design process. To this end, the project provides 1) a culturally appropriate conceptual fishing boat design and 2) an industrial design case study. This project identifies mechanistic and non-mechanistic design elements and presents the results of thematic analysis. This project develops a 40 GRT (gross register ton), Malaysian Class B fishing boat design based primarily upon ethnographic study of stakeholders, which includes fishermen, boat builders, designers and owners. The design concept is evaluated by fishermen regarding perceived performance as a fishing boat, aesthetics, safety, and comfort. The concept boat is compared with the visual stereotype of a traditional Malaysian fishing boat and a Western style, deck forward design. The conceptual design is evaluated with a creative product analysis matrix (CPAM) followed by a questionnaire based evaluation by fishermen. This project is intended for students and practitioners of industrial design interested in culturally appropriate design. It provides insights into design methodology and ethnographic methods for developing an understanding of indigenous design sensitivities of a client or end user. This study provides an example of product development that integrates the designer’s creativity with the stakeholders’ requirements and material culture. This project also demonstrates the technique of superimposing photographs via computer aided design (CAD) drawings to develop a visual stereotype. Moreover, this project demonstrates the benefit of employing visual models in charcoal and clay in ethnographic fieldwork.

It is a common knowledge that safety is of importance for every sailing vessel but becomes unquestionable for a submarine for obvious reasons. Prerequisite for the safety of a submarine is that all its structural parts “working” on the diving pressure when the submarine is underneath, can withstand successfully the exercised enormous pressure and consequently the developed high stresses imposed on them. Piping of the submarine is one major part under diving pressure. The best way to assure these prerequisites, is to inspect piping frequently and using destructive and non destructive methods to get the necessary level of assurance or confirmation of safety. This is not always an easy task particularly in a submarine where the space is very “crowdy” and the major part of the piping is practically inaccessible. Therefore, a more rational way has to be established, a way that would allow verifying the condition of inaccessible parts by making certain that piping retains the necessary reliability that allows the submarine to be further safely used. This is the scope of the present study namely by using a “rational approach” to assess accurately and objectively the reliability of the piping. Having achieved that, one can proceed further and determine the probability of a certain deterioration for a specific time frame and/or the time frame in which you anticipate the deterioration of a piping to exceed a predetermined “threshold”. Last but not least, in the development of this study the accuracy of the mathematical models used have been compared to actual measurements (data) taken in a later stage. Very much to our satisfaction all these comparisons turned to be very close in a surprisingly matching way. This coincidence holds promise for further and more extensive applicability of the models used.

The ship design process is complex and strongly influenced by both the inherent technical complexity and interactions of subsystems. These arise from within ships and from external influences, such as the design environment and the capabilities provided by the available tools. These difficulties are particularly found in the design of service vessels, such as warships. Both requirements and performance of the ship are multi-faceted and some aspects may not be readily amenable to numerical description and assessment, particularly in the eady stages of the design process. Preliminary ship design is characterised by exploration of options and the investigation of design drivers and relationships, with great variability in the design definition adopted by designers. This provides significant potential for investigation of alternative and innovative design solutions. A wide range of broad approaches and detail procedures for the application of computers to preliminary ship design have been proposed, including an architecturally centred approach to preliminary ship design. The latter has been previously proposed as a method for the integration of the technical and stylistic aspects. The most recent implementation of the Design Building Block approach is as a module within the PARAMARINE ship design software, known as SURFCON. This research commenced with evaluating and demonstrating this implementation fit for use in preliminary ship design by modelling of a conventional vessel. A detailed procedure for using the tool was developed and this procedure was demonstrated by the development of a similar design. The Design Building Block approach was subsequently applied to a range of innovative preliminary ship design studies. These covered a range of vessel types and also differed in their overall objectives, including the assessment of the feasibility of a new concept and the evaluation of the impact of specific capabilities on the overall ship design. The research confirmed that the use of the integrated spatial and numerical model, with an interactive graphical display, increased transparency in modelling and analysis, while greatly enhancing the designer's understanding of the design drivers. The flexibility and relative ease with which major features of the design could be modified, encouraged the exploration of alternatives and led to a ship design process akin to the sketching processes in product and architectural design. Further research is proposed in the areas of interface design to support innovate design, incorporation of further simulation and numerical approaches, together with the integration of systems engineering aspects into innovative preliminary ship design.

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The research work described in this thesis has addressed the requirements of the port and maritime industry through the development of low cost and user-friendly software tools and techniques for complete port design, planning and evaluation, to be used by the small to medium sized ports (SMPs). The overall objective of this research has been met by providing supporting software tools with an accompanying database that has enabled ports, primarily small-to-medium sized ports, to enhance their efficiency. The research also developed and devised a modelling and evaluation technique or method that can take account of complete operational characteristics and perfonnance of a port and/or tenninal. This objective has been successfully achieved and the research has produced: • An all-encompassing data model for the Maritime Transport Industry • A Concern Net, the hierarchical system to be used for complete port'evaluation • The generic software tools: 1. Port Process Simulator (PPS) 2. Tenninal Planning Board (TPB) 3. and accompanying database(DB) , These Software tools have been tested and successfully validated by developing alternative scenarios for the modelled Tivoli Container Tenninal, Port of Cork - Republic of Ireland. The research successfully concluded, by reporting the results for the 'Complete Port Evaluation of the TIVoli Container Tenninal, Port of CorX- Republic of Ireland'.