Safety in shipping: The human element

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Abstract

Introduction

There are numerous diverse papers that have addressed issues within maritime safety; to date there has been no comprehensive review of this literature to aggregate the causal factors within accidents in shipping and surmise current knowledge.

Methods

This paper reviewed the literature on safety in three key areas: common themes of accidents, the influence of human error, and interventions to make shipping safer. The review included 20 studies of seafaring across the following areas: fatigue, stress, health, situation awareness, teamwork, decision-making, communication, automation, and safety culture.

Results

The review identifies the relative contributions of individual and organizational factors in shipping accidents, and also presents the methodological issues with previous research.

Conclusions

The paper concludes that monitoring and modifying the human factors issues presented in this paper could contribute to maritime safety performance.

Impact on industry

This review illustrates which human factors issues are prevalent in incidents therefore this gives shipping practitioners a focus for interventions.

Introduction

“Shipping is perhaps the most international of all the world's great industries and one of the most dangerous.” (International Maritime Organization [IMO], 2002a)

The shipping industry is expanding exponentially: 80 million Americans per year use U.S. flagged vessels, 90% of the U.S. population is served by domestic shipping, 97% of the UK’s trade by weight arrives or leaves by sea. The United States maritime administration states that “shipping is vital to the nation’s security, economy, and transportation” (U.S. Department of Transportation, 2004). The 2004 operating budget for the United States Coast Guard was 330 million dollars. Globally, statistics reflect the same fiscal importance of this industry, for instance there are around 50,000 merchant ships trading internationally, transporting a range of cargos. The world shipping fleet is registered in over 150 nations, and manned by over one million seafarers (BIMCO et al., 2004).

The shipping industry has a fairly good safety record, however maritime incidents have a high potential for catastrophes. Perrow (1999) pointed out that “Tankers carrying LNG have the potential to blow up a whole city;” he argues that there is still a strong motivation for profit in this industry and ships and their crews are pushed to the limits to meet deadlines. The first major oil spill, which was in the English Channel in 1967 and involved the tanker Torrey Canyon, exemplified this environment of high pressure and acute time demands. The captain, to save 6 hours, took a more direct route through the Scilly isles to arrive at Milford Haven in time to make the high tide. If he missed this window, his ship would be forced to wait at anchor for five days before being able to enter the bay. The oil in the tanker was moved to different tanks to raise the ship two inches to avoid a potential grounding. When passing through the Scilly Isles, the vessel came across a fishing boat and was unable to turn quickly enough and the ship ran aground, spilling 100,000 tons of oil contaminating a total area of about 300 km along the southwestern coastline of England and along the northwestern coastline of France.

Perrow (1999) states that the error inducing character of the system in shipping lies in the social organization of the personnel onboard, economic pressure, the structure of the industry, and insurance and difficulties in international regulation. This review examines the current status of safety in the maritime industry and the human factors that may contribute to the causal chain in shipping accidents. There is a particular combination of demands characteristic of the maritime industry such as fatigue, stress, work pressure, communication, environmental factors, and long periods of time away from home, which could be potential contributors. Exemplifying that in shipping “there are a number of workplace dangers in combination, something rare in other industries” (McNamara, Collins, & Matthews, 2000). Yet, it appears that very little human factors research has been carried out within the maritime industry.

The 21st century shipping industry faces new challenges. For instance, 25 years ago the average cargo ship would have been manned with a crew of between 40 and 50 (Grech & Horberry, 2002). Today technological advances have contributed to decreased manning, in some cases to just 22 seafarers on a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC). There are two sides to the technological advances. Improvements in ship design and navigation aids have reduced the frequency and severity of shipping incidents. In turn, the reduction of failures in technology has revealed the underlying level of influence of human error in accident causation.

Section snippets

Injuries and incidents

Merchant shipping is known to be an occupation with a high rate of fatal injuries caused by organizational accidents and maritime disasters (Hansen, Nielsen, & Frydenberg, 2002). The United States Coast Guard (USCG, 2004) reports their 5-year average of 673 passenger and maritime worker injuries and fatalities. Common incidents such as collisions, allisions, and groundings specifically have decreased in this period; this is attributed to enhanced technology in aids to navigation. The USCG

Method

Several electronic databases (e.g., PsychARTICLES, PsychINFO, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science) were used to identify research articles on human factors in shipping by using the following search terms: maritime, shipping, stress, fatigue, situation awareness, decision making, communication, teamwork, safety, and shipping/maritime accidents. Additionally, institutions that had conducted work in these areas (including government bodies) were sourced through search engines (e.g., Google) and

Automation

Due to reduced manning levels in the maritime industry there is now an emphasis on automation. There has been a cultural shift in the maritime industry toward increased levels of automation in tasks, particularly with regard to navigation systems. This increase in automation and decrease in manning levels has changed the role of the seafarer (Grech & Horberry, 2002). Sarter and Woods (1995) purport that automation can create new attentional demands. The operator has to permanently keep track of

Personnel issues

This first section deals with human performance factors or behaviors that may contribute to maritime incidents and presents research that has evaluated the contribution of these factors in accident causation.

Non-technical skills

Non-technical skills are an additional set of competencies that are used integrally with technical shipping skills, such as those to manoeuvre the vessel, or set down the anchor. They encompass both interpersonal and cognitive skills such as situation awareness, communication, team working, and leadership. Research in the aviation, medical, and nuclear power industries has exposed these underlying skills in best practice. The following is a review of research that has focused on non-technical

Safety training

“Another logical venue for the application of CRM is in maritime operations”(Helmreich, Wilhelm, Klinect, & Merritt, 2001).

As the previous section of the review has demonstrated, there are many non-technical skills in shipping, which have been established through research as being integral to best practice. In his book Normal Accidents, Perrow (1999) notes that it is not unusual for a deck officer to remain aghast and silent while his captain grounds the ship or collides with another (p 178),

Safety climate: measurement and safety performance

Organization safety climate is like a snapshot of selected aspects of organization safety culture at that particular point in time (Mearns et al., 2003). Although there is some debate on the definition of safety climate, definitions proposed consistently feature either employee’s attitudes or perceptions of safety (Clarke, 2006). One commonly used definition was proposed by Zohar (2000), where essentially climate perceptions relate to “procedures as patterns,” whereby consistent procedures

Conclusions

There are many demanding aspects of seafaring such as the inability of employees to leave the worksite, extreme weather conditions, long periods away from home, and motion of the workplace. Some of these are unchangeable and are a reflection of the nature of the domain. However, it is possible to modify, supplement, and introduce new strategies or interventions to potentially reduce the impact these factors have on the health and welfare of the individual seafarer (Parker et al., 2002).

There

Catherine Hetherington is a PhD student at University of Aberdeen currently working on her thesis, sponsored by STASCO, entitled ‘Evaluating the antecedents and consequences of safety climate.’ Her research interests include; antecedents and consequences of safety climate, leadership and accident causation.

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  • Cited by (0)

    Catherine Hetherington is a PhD student at University of Aberdeen currently working on her thesis, sponsored by STASCO, entitled ‘Evaluating the antecedents and consequences of safety climate.’ Her research interests include; antecedents and consequences of safety climate, leadership and accident causation.

    Rhona Flin PhD is Professor of Applied Psychology in the Industrial Psychology Research Center at the University of Aberdeen. Her research examines leadership and safety climate, as well as non-technical (CRM) skills in pilots, anesthesiologists and surgeons.

    Kathryn Mearns Dr Philos is currently Senior Lecturer and co-director of the Industrial Psychology Research Center at the University of Aberdeen. Her research interests encompass various aspects of applied psychology including human and organisational factors in health and safety, risk perception and trust in organisations.

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