On the Influence of Human Factors on Safety of Remotely-Controlled Merchant Vessels

Abstract

With numerous efforts undertaken by both industry and academia to develop and implement autonomous merchant vessels, their safety remains an utmost priority. One of the modes of their operation which is expected to be used is a remote control. Therein, some, if not all, decisions will be made remotely by human operators and executed locally by a vessel control system. This arrangement incorporates a possibility of a human factor occurrence. To this end, a variety of factors are known in the literature along with a complex network of mutual relationships between them. In order to study their potential influence on the safety of remotely-controlled merchant vessels, an expert study has been conducted using the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System-Maritime Accidents (HFACS–MA) framework. The results indicate that the most relevant for the safety of this prospective system is to ensure that known problems are properly and timely rectified and that remote operators maintain their psycho- and physiological conditions. The experts elicited have also assigned higher significance to the causal factors of active failures than latent failures, thus indicating a general belief that operators’ actions represent the final and the most important barrier against accident occurrence.

NTNU Shore Control Lab: Designing shore control centres in the age of autonomous ships

“…In the field of safety and risk science, researchers have examined the role of humans as safety controls in the operation of autonomous ships, applying advanced modelling techniques to predict how critical scenarios like collision avoidance will be coordinated [10][11][12][13][14]. Others have raised the challenges associated with human factors and training requirements of Shore Control Center Operators [15][16][17][18][19][20]. Meanwhile, applications have expanded from coastal "short-sea" shipping applications to shore control for urban autonomous passenger ferries [21] and inland waterway vessels [22].…”

Costs and Benefits of Autonomous Shipping—A Literature Review

“…Despite the growing public and research interest in autonomous ships, it appears that relatively little scientific effort has been devoted to the issue of evaluating economic benefits stemming from implementing these solutions, compared to other aspects, for example safety [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. The descriptions of economic attractiveness of the projects described earlier in this section do not contain the detailed information about components affecting the economic viability of the anticipated developments.…”

Human Factor Issues in Remote Ship Operations: Lesson Learned by Studying Different Domains

“…Communication challenges and misunderstandings during the interaction between autonomous and unmanned vessels with manned vessels might occur due to bad communications [7] and the organizational climate. This issue was highlighted by Wróbel et al [31] as a working atmosphere which comprises structure, policies and culture within the organization. The organizational climate, which refers to the atmosphere of the organization which encompasses relationships, cultures, policies, and command and control structures.…”