HANSA 01-2021

SCHiFFStECHNiK | SHiP tECHNoloGY
Seafarers have expertise to contribute
in the prevention of accidents
Unmanned? Human errors and expertise...
Human error is a factor in most marine accidents, but the presence of the crew is also
instrumental in the detection and prevention of accidents. How is unmanned operation of
cargo ships going to affect marine accidents?
Serious marine accidents are fortunately
on the decline, but we still see
groundings, collisions and fires occurring
at sea every year, resulting in tragic
loss of life and with enormous financial
and ecological consequences. it is widely
acknowledged that a large part of these
marine accidents can be at least partly
attributed to human error. removing
the humans from the equation seems to
be the obvious solution, but human error
does not simply disappear with the elimination
of the onboard crew.
Human error is present in every part
of the ship’s life, not just in the day-today
onboard operation. Even if large cargo
ships can be made to operate entirely
without a crew, it will still be humans
who monitor, remote control and maintain
the ships and their machinery and
operating systems. a change as fundamental
as unmanned operation, however,
must be expected to have a major impact
on marine accidents.
in fact, the reduction of marine accidents
is one of the main arguments for
the introduction of unmanned ships. Unfortunately,
with no large unmanned cargo
ships in operation today, a simple side-by-side
comparison between manned
and unmanned operation is not possible.
However, data from conventionally manned
ships can tell us much about the impact
unmanned operation will have on
the occurrence of marine incidents and
accidents. The analysis of marine accident
reports can tell us something about
the role of humans in the occurrence
and the consequences of the accidents
and some interesting research has already
been done on this. What we cannot
learn from these reports is the role of ship
crews in marine incidents that were prevented
from turning into accidents.
Near misses
an incident that, if not stopped by a
fortuitous break in the chain of events,
would have resulted in loss is defined as
a near miss. The reporting of near miss
incidents is a mandatory part of the international
Safety Management code,
but only has to be done internally within
the shipping companies. Near miss reports
are not normally made public as
they contain business-sensitive information
and are typically very hard to get access
to.
one shipping company, however, very
generously provided access to their near
miss reports, thus enabling an analysis of
the role of the onboard crews in the occurrence,
detection and ability to stop the
development of these incidents into accidents.
The results of the analysis, presented
here in brief, were published recently
36 HaNSa – international Maritime Journal 01 | 2021