Ship cabin layout design using game theory

Game theory is a mathematical tool developed to understand competitive situations in which rational decision-makers interact to achieve their objectives. Game theory techniques have recently been applied to various engineering design problems in which the action of one component impacts that of any other component. In this article we first provide an overview of different game theory formulations, and then we present a survey on the approaches to ship cabin layout design, outlining several open research issues. To this end, we propose an effective method to facilitate the multidisciplinary decision-making process involved. A non-cooperative game is formulated, and the solution of this game is determined by the Nash equilibrium for the amount of equipment and furniture needed for the respective location and to achieve as high performance as possible in a cabin. The research was supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (20060390305).