A vessel inspection information system.

Abstract

Marine safety is a major responsibility of the United States Coast Guard. In carrying out this task, the Coast Guard conducts periodic inspections of existing merchant vessels and supervises construction of new vessels. To support and help promote marine safety, a Vessel Inspection Information System (VIIS) has been proposed. The system would be used to capture design information, inspection data, and other relevant information; store it in a centralized data base; and make the information available to Coast Guard Units as needed through the use of interactive computer terminals. The purpose of this thesis is to present the results of a computer program which provides cost estimates of the communications networks in VIIS and provides information on network performance.