“The Need for Additional Human Factors Considerations in Ship Operations”
Author: Rik van Hemmen
Published: September 2008
Presented at the Second International Symposium on Ship Operations, Management & Economics in Athens, Greece
Many of Martin & Ottaway’s investigations of environmental crimes, collisions and other shipboard non-conformances have indicated that crews are very heavily stressed as compared to even a few decades ago.
This paper summarizes an investigation in historical crew sizing methods and the lack of any present day investigations in crew sizing and workload. The investigation is a summary of actual cases M&O worked on and work performed through SNAME’s Technology and Research panel EC-7.
The results of this work indicate that with the advent of new regulations there is a significant shortage of crew dedicated to the environmental and safety systems that have been introduced aboard ships in the last decades.
The paper proposes the introduction of a shipboard environmental officer. Follow-up discussions on this concept have not yet shown a strong trend towards the introduction of such a senior officer aboard international cargo vessels, but it is probably only a matter of time.
To download the full paper click this link: The_Need_for_Additional_Human_Factors_Considerations_in_Ship_Operations