Review on the Current State of Scenario- and Simulation-Based V&V in Application for Maritime Traffic Systems

Due to their importance for the global market, interest in (highly) automated and autonomous maritime transport systems has increased significantly in recent years. One of the main challenges in the development of such transport systems is to ensure functionality and safety. Due to the introduction of non-deterministic approaches, such as the use of self-learning artificial intelligence, classical methods for safety verification are no longer suitable. Systematic scenario-based validation and verification approaches have already been proposed to address this problem. Often these are based on the use of simulations. Currently, a lot of effort is put into the implementation of such simulation systems and many (partial) solutions have already been proposed. Nevertheless, a common line of thought seems to be missing. This study, therefore, identifies requirements for such systems, systematically searches for published scientific literature to identify existing systems, reviews the systems found regarding the posed requirements, and in that way identifies open research gaps. Finally, as a result of this detailed literature search and review, precise recommendations for future studies are given.