FSA Based Analysis of Deck Officers’ Non-Technical Skills in Crisis Situations

A review of maritime accidents conducted in 2006 confirms that human error is the main contributing factor in maritime accidents. This study illustrates that major maritime accidents are not caused by technical problems but by failure of the crew to respond to the situation appropriately.Non-technical skills (NTS) encompass both interpersonal and cognitive skills such as situation awareness, teamwork, decision-making, leadership, managerial skills, communication and language skills, etc. In a crisis situation good NTS allow the deck officers to recognise a problem quickly and manage the situation and team safely and effectively. As a result, the evaluation and grading of deck officers’ NTS is necessary to assure safety at sea.This research aims to identify the links between maritime accidents and deck officers’ NTS and identifies significant criteria and their contributions to the deck officers’ NTS by using the Formal Safety Assessment concept. Taxonomy of deck officers’ non-technical skills was developed by conducting interviews with experts and collecting NTS weighting data for calculating each NTS weight by the AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) method.Based on the taxonomy of the deck officers NTS behavioural markers were developed for the assessment of their NTS in the bridge simulator. A set of bridge simulator crisis scenarios was developed to assess deck officers’ NTS.Two sets of Chief Mate volunteer students’ NTS performance was assessed in the bridge simulator. One set of students are those who have not obtained NTS training i.e. HELM (Human Element Leadership and Management) and the other set of students are those who have obtained the HELM training as part of their main course of study. All groups’ NTS performances are calculated by the ER (Evidential Reasoning) Algorithm and are compared to see if there are any improvements in the NTS performance with the HELM training. After comparison it was found that NTS performance of the groups with HELM training was only 0.8% better than the NTS performance of the groups without HELM training.HELM course effectiveness is evaluated and suggestions are given for further improvements to the course. Cost benefit analysis for improving deck officers’ NTS was carried out by Bayesian Network and Decision Tree Model.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Liverpool John Moores University

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Saeed, F

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wall, A
• Riahi, R
• Roberts, C

• V Naval Science (General)

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.24377/LJMU.t.00004489

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk:4489