Comparing U.S. coast Guard buoy tender performance using simulation

The Coast Guard plans to replace its aging fleet of buoy tenders with newly constructed vessels. Many of the vessel designs being considered have never been built, therefore they have no track record. Moreover, the Coast Guard requires a way to compare these vessels against one another for each operating district of consideration in order to choose the best vessel possible. A simulation has been developed which models a single tender working a given field of buoys. The purpose of this model is to evaluate alternative buoy tender designs of differing characteristics in realistic operational environments.