## 1 Introduction  
The most common merchant ships by number are general cargo ships [1], representing 13.1% of the world fleet, and are a type of fleet in constant growth from a dead weight in tons point of view, despite the strong impact of containerization of the last decades [2; 3]. Nevertheless, on the one hand, some extra-large, very specialized general cargo items are not suitable to be loaded in a standardized container; for, this reason, the presence of general cargo ships is still in demand. Therefore, general cargo ships (or multipurpose vessels) play an important role in the freight of modern maritime transport. On the other hand, the heavy industry and renewables cargo items, among others, have experienced an increase in demand for multipurpose cargo vessels, heavy-lift vessels, or open-deck carriers in the last years [4]. Consequently, due to the very nature of shipments transported on board these vessels, a more bespoke carriage service is presented, making the manual human intervention from a planning and operation perspective a more demanding industry [2]. The trends point out that on the sea route is the segment of maritime transport where marine casualties or accidents are produced more frequently [5]. In this sense, from the period from 2014 to 2022, the medium percentage of the influence of the human element in the events of the accidents is 80.7%, having an influence equal to or greater than 80.1% in cargo ships, passenger ships, and service ships [5]. Different from bulk carriers or tanker ships, the human element is more essential in the stowage plan and lashing design of cargoes on board multipurpose vessels. As cargo items are becoming larger and heavier, the ship's staff must meet ever greater challenges in terms of accelerations and forces sustained by the shipment, which can be counteracted by a proper stowage plan and lashing devices. Although the securing of too large and heavy cargoes (project shipment) requires a very specific study for stowage and lashing arrangement, in these projects, usually a combination of bigger and smaller cargo items are loaded. Then, the simplest model calculation should be available to the lashing planners to address the stowage and securing design of these smaller items. The optimal stowage problem and lashing arrangement have attracted much attention from researchers in the container and Ro-Ro shipping sectors for many years [6]. In the literature, relevant research can be found about the planning stowage and lashing arrangement of these standardized cargo units. In 1997, [PERSON] et al. [7] developed a mathematical model for the estimation of the loads in the lashing arrangement of road trailers on board Ro-Ro ships sailing in severe conditions. [PERSON] [8] carried out several practical improvements related to ship stability, fire safety, and cargo handling efficiency when optimizing cargo stowage on Ro-Ro decks with the use of a mixed-integer linear programming problem. [PERSON] et al. [9] presented a mathematical model giving the lashing loads for a trailer stowed on a Ro-Ro under the effects of rolling motion in beam waves in order to determine the reliability of the securing system under realistic conditions. [PERSON] et al. [10] developed a software tool to optimize the loading operations of trailers on Ro-Ro ships. [PERSON] et al. [11] proposed a step-wise stowage planning approach to generate optimal stowage plans for Ro-Ro ships transporting trailers, some of them with dangerous cargo, and in short sea-shipping. In the container shipping sector, [PERSON] et al. [12] presented a new method of evaluating the container lashing arrangement on a container ship using an \"acceleration ellipsoid\". [PERSON] et al. [13] introduced a model to predict the lashing forces with multimodal deep learning without explicit calculation of the lashing force. [PERSON] et al. [14] investigated the dynamic response of the forces (lashing, twist lock, and stack displacement) to provide a better understanding of the mechanics responsible for the container damage and loss.