Development of training method for vessel traffic service based on cognitive process

Abstract

Vessel traffic service (VTS) is important to protect the safety of maritime traffic. Along with the expansion of monitoring area per VTS operator in Tokyo Bay, Japan, inexperienced operators must acquire the ability to quickly and accurately detect conditions that requires attention (CRAs) from a monitoring screen. In our previous study (Song B, Itoh H, Kawamura Y, Fukuto J (2018) Analysis of Cognitive Processes of Operators of Vessel Traffic Service. In: Proceedings of the 2018 International Association of Institutes of Navigation. IAIN 2018, pp 529–534, Song et al., J Jpn Inst Navig 140:48–54, 2019), we established a task analysis method based on the assumption that the cognitive process model consists of three stages: “situational awareness”, “situation judgment”, and “decision making”. A simulation experiment was conducted for VTS operators with different levels of ability and their cognitive processes were compared based on the observation of eye movements. The results showed that the inexperienced operators’ abilities to predict situation changes were lower. And it was considered that oral transmission of the knowledge is difficult, thus new training methods are needed to help the inexperienced operators to understand the prediction methods of experienced operators. In this study, based on the cognitive process of an experienced operator, we analyzed the prediction procedures of situation changes and developed an educational tool called vessel traffic routine (VTR). The training method learning VTR aims to quickly improve inexperienced VTS operators’ abilities to predict situation changes. A simulation verification experiment of the VTR effect was conducted for four inexperienced operators, who were divided into two groups with and without prior explanation of VTR. By evaluating the cognitive processes of inexperienced operators, it was confirmed that those given prior explanations of VTR were better at detecting CRAs.

Case Study of Ship Traffic Crowds in The Malacca Strait-Singapore by Using Vessel Traffic System

“…The VTS was built to improve the security and shipping safety system in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. This tool will be able to accommodate 13,000 ships from Japan that pass through the Malacca and Singapore Straits [8].…”

Predicting for Traffic Risk Degree: Novel Prediction Method and Samples

“…At present, five degrees of traffic risk are often used: trivial, tolerable, moderate, substantial, and intolerable ( 5 , 6 ). However, there is growing evidence of some errors in traffic risk prediction ( 7 ) and it is usually considered that this results from the inherent difficult in the prediction process ( 8 ).…”