Trans RINA, Vol 156, Part C1, Intl J Marine Design, Jan - Dec 2014 DISCUSSION
THE FUTURE OF HUMAN FACTORS IN THE MARITIME INDUSTRY C Greenbank, BMT Reliability Consultants, UK L Avery, BMT Designers and Planners, USA
A discussion of the future of any subject is always tempered by differing perception of the present. Human factors in the maritime industry is no different from many other disciplines in the maritime world; it is already done well in some areas but a more common reality is that there is much that could be done better.
However, to understand the future requires an
understanding of the present and the current perceived barriers to increased uptake of a discipline which cuts to the core of the commercial world and offers reductions in total life cost, performance and at the same time improvements in safety.
Human factors is the application of the sciences of
psychology, physiology, sociology and engineering to the design of systems and products with a goal of reducing the total life cost and likelihood of human error, improving safety and health, and optimising overall system effectiveness. The human is a part of the system, and as with any other system component it needs to be integrated effectively to ensure optimal and predictable performance. The complexity of addressing human performance means that it is necessary to take a structured approach to ensure
that all aspects are
consistently considered. This is termed the Human System Integration (HSI) process and it
Manpower Personnel Training Human Factors Environment Safety Occupational Health Survivability Habitability
Since the goals of HSI are critical to the success of any system, human factors as the integrating domain of HSI is already an established part of the specification, design, manufacture and the regulatory frameworks in most safety critical industries. However, the world has been trading by sea far longer than it has been flying or regulating nuclear power plants and this history brings with it established solutions which in many predate the invention of the very technologies which allow so-called comparable industries to even exist. The maritime industry has been dealing with the challenges of the sea
© 2014: The Royal Institution of Naval Architects breaks the
problem down into nine interrelated domains which need to be considered:
for a long time, and the structures in place to safeguard the multitude of different stakeholders in the maritime industry have therefore evolved over time to address the unique challenges that have been faced. This historical evolution of the baseline expectations for a ship design results in a regulatory environment that is rather different from comparable industries such as aviation. Whereas aviation has a finite number of aircraft types and models which are certified by national bodies, each new ship has no such common type approval and the degree of design variation is therefore only limited by the number of new ships
built. For human factors practitioners this
represents a unique challenge since other frequently compared industries have a more centralised regulatory framework which can be used to drive improvements in minimum standards. However, in the maritime sector it is currently the multitude of ship
owners and those
specifying the design of new vessels who hold the key to overall improvements in human performance at sea.
As the world fleet grows in size over the coming years there will be a need to drive down the loss rate in the industry as well as improve overall safety and efficiency. Two ships per week were lost last year, and with the world fleet expected to increase by around 50% by 2020 then a loss rate on this scale would translate into a ship being lost somewhere in the world every few days. The reason for those losses will be varied, but the human element will have played a pivotal role in most of the losses. Losses on this scale are financially wasteful and may not be necessary. Although the loss rates themselves are interesting, they also hide the ugly truth that behind them sits a much larger irrecoverable cost, the lives either irrevocably changed or lost. Accidents, incidents, and injuries are expensive and the vast majority of them will have a human error component. To make a meaningful
difference to the overall safety of the
industry, a different and more systematic approach to integrating the human element into ship design and operation will be needed at all levels and across different stakeholders. Not all will agree with this and some will claim that cost prevents them doing so, yet others will reap the rewards by investing in good design.
Looking to the future, there is no reason why the maritime industry should not be leading the world in how human factors is done and implemented. Other industries have dealt with similar challenges over time in a different way and now make a claim that what they have done is right. Telling seafarers and the maritime industry that they should be more like aircrew or nuclear power plant engineers is not going to be effective and indeed is not
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