Title: Naval ship design-process analysis through dynamic social networks

Speaker: Prof. Kaklis Panagiotis (Reader, University of Strathclyde)

Abstract: Modern naval ship design is increasing in complexity as more and more systems are incorporated into the design process, leading to an increase in the number (and interdependence) of tasks that designers need to complete and progress through the design stages. This work develops a dynamic bipartite social network representation, separating the nodes in activities and individuals, with the aim to analyse and draw conclusions regarding the design process. A dynamic time-dependent graph (TDG) is constructed with the use of a presence function for the edges. Network properties (density, clustering, active tasks/designers) are expressed as functions of time, and node-wise metrics (centralities) reveal the key role of individuals in the naval ship design process, which is heavily-crowded with respect to tasks. Furthermore, application of the model to naval ship design data reveals interesting insights regarding the impact of COVID-19 and the design company’s adopted hiring policy.

Short Bio: Panagiotis Kaklis is Reader at the University of Strathclyde, Dept. Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering (2013-) and Honorary Fellow IACM (Institute of Applied & Computational Mathematics), FORTH (Foundation of Research & Technology Hellas) (2023-). From 1990 to 2018, he served at NTUA (National Technical University of Athens), School Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering ascending the ranks from Assistant to Associate and then full Professor. His research activities, include AI-based ship design, geometric modeling, iso-geometric analysis and hydrodynamics.