Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique for Marine Accident Analysis: The Case of Ship Grounding

Abstract

Human factors are a major cause of accidents in every industry. Thus, several studies focused on reducing the number of accidents. However, marine accident data from the European Maritime Safety Agency, Transportation Safety Board (TSB) of Canada, and Japan Transport Safety Board indicate that the number of marine accidents continue to increase without any signs of reduction. Therefore, it is necessary to develop alternatives and solutions to reduce the number of marine accidents. The marine accident data from the TSB in Canada indicates that during 2008-2015, approximately 31% of the accidents corresponded to grounding, 17% corresponded to capsizing and sinking, and that the number of accidents due to collisions only constituted 9% of all the accidents. Grounding may result in certain disadvantages such as damages to ships and environmental damages and even sinking. Therefore, analysing causes based on human factors necessitates considering ergonomics and technology and using a set of basic error probabilities that are modified by structuring Performance Shaping Factors (PSFs). In the study, a Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique (HEART) was applied to analyse human error-producing conditions (EPCs) that lead to grounding incidents. By using the HEART method, there are 70 EPC that were discovered, and mostly the grounding is caused by failure to maintain proper look-out while sailing.