Future-proof ship pipe routing: Navigating the energy transition

Ship pipe route design is often overlooked in the context of the energy transition, although it is a crucial driver for design time and costs. Motivated by this, we propose a mathematical approach for modeling uncertainty in pipe routing with deterministic optimization, stochastic programming, and robust optimization. The uncertainty entails not knowing which type of fuel will be used in the ship’s future. All three models are based on state-of-the-art integer linear programming models for the Stochastic Steiner Forest Problem and adjusted to the maritime domain using specific constraints for pipe routing. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for uncertainty in ship pipe routing, demonstrating cost reductions of up to 22% based on experiments with artificial and realistic data. Our methods enable engineers to explore different levels of preparedness for the energy transition with minimal effort during the early design phase. • We study ship pipe routing under the uncertainty of the energy transition. • Our methods help to prepare for the energy transition in the early design stage. • We introduce the novel 2-Stage Stochastic Steiner Forest Problem. • We build on the state-of-the-art for the deterministic Steiner Forest Problem. • Our results show up to 22% cost reductions for the methods considering uncertainty.