The Contribution of Ship Bridge Design to Maritime Accidents

Abstract

Shipping is an industry where accidents have potential catastrophic effect on humans, the environment or material assets. The design of bridge equipment and the bridge layout has a significant impact on the human-technology interaction on a ship’s bridge, hence design is important for safety of navigation. This paper presents a review of 28 accident investigation reports from the last decade where design of ship bridge equi pment or bridge layout has been identified as contributing factors. Six categories of design issues were identified: 1) Bridge layout; 2) Not using available electronic equi pment; 3) Unexpected use of electronic equipment; 4) Mode confusion; 5) Lack of information about system status; 6) Trust in electronic equipment. The corresponding investigation boards’ safety recommendations and the shipowners’ responses, mainly concerned revising the safety management system, revising or introducing procedu res and checklists, as well as crew training. These responses place the responsibility for an improved human-technology interaction on the human operator. The few recom mendations and actions that concerned improving design of technology where local fixes that do not contribute to learning on organizational or system level.