Posted: January 16th, 2024

Analysis of Maritime Accidents to Prevent Future Incidents Through Seamanship

Analysis of Maritime Accidents to Prevent Future Incidents Through Seamanship

Maritime accidents are events that result in loss of life, injury, or damage to property or the environment in the maritime domain. Maritime accidents can have serious consequences for human safety, marine ecosystems, and economic activities. Therefore, it is important to analyze the causes and effects of maritime accidents and to identify the best practices and measures to prevent them from happening again.

One of the main challenges in analyzing maritime accidents is that they are complex and multifaceted phenomena, involving a combination of human, technical, organizational, environmental, and situational factors. Many studies have pointed out that human error is a major cause of maritime accidents, either directly or indirectly. Human error can be defined as “any deviation from the appropriate course of action that could lead to an undesired outcome” (Reason 1990). Human error can occur at different levels of the maritime system, such as individual, team, organizational, or inter-organizational level.

According to a bibliometric review of the literature on human error in maritime accidents by Dominguez-Péry et al. (2021), there are three main root causes of human and organizational error in maritime contexts: human resources and management, socio-technical information systems and information technologies, and individual/cognition-related errors. Human resources and management include factors such as leadership, communication, teamwork, training, competence, motivation, fatigue, stress, and culture. Socio-technical information systems and information technologies include factors such as design, usability, reliability, compatibility, automation, decision support, and cyber security. Individual/cognition-related errors include factors such as perception, attention, memory, judgment, decision making, situation awareness, and workload.

To prevent future incidents through seamanship, it is essential to address these root causes of human error and to enhance the safety culture and performance of the maritime system. Some of the possible measures and recommendations are:

– Implementing effective safety management systems that define the roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders, establish clear policies and procedures, provide adequate resources and support, monitor and evaluate performance, and foster continuous improvement and learning.
– Providing regular and relevant training and education for all maritime personnel on topics such as navigation rules, collision avoidance, emergency response, fire prevention and fighting, environmental protection, risk assessment and management, human factors and ergonomics, etc.
– Enhancing the communication and coordination among all actors involved in the maritime system, such as ship operators, crew members, shore-based staff, port authorities, pilots, coast guards, etc., using appropriate channels and tools.
– Improving the design and maintenance of ships and equipment to ensure their functionality, reliability, compatibility, usability,
and safety. Adopting appropriate levels of automation and decision support systems that can assist human operators without reducing their situation awareness or increasing their complacency.
– Promoting a positive safety culture that values safety as a priority,
encourages reporting and learning from errors and near misses,
supports teamwork and cooperation,
and rewards good practices and behaviors.

By applying these measures and recommendations,
maritime accidents can be reduced or prevented,
and the safety and efficiency of maritime operations can be improved.

References:

[1] Dominguez-Péry C., Vuddaraju L.N.R., Corbett-Etchevers I., Tassabehji R. (2021). Reducing maritime accidents in ships by tackling human error: a bibliometric review
and research agenda. Journal of Shipping
and Trade 6:20. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41072-021-00098-y

[2] Reason J. (1990). Human Error. Cambridge University Press.

[3] SIRC (2018). The causes of maritime accidents in the period 2002-2016. https://safety4sea.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/SIRC-The-causes-of-maritime-accidents-in-the-period-2002-2016-2018_12.pdf

[4] Safety4Sea (2019). 10 tips to avoid accidents at sea. https://safety4sea.com/ten-tips-to-avoid-accidents-at-sea/

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