From the magazine – Integrating human factors in the design, development and operation in the maritime industry is vital to create a safe and efficient operation. This was discussed at the Human Factors 2024 Conference at Wageningen on 8-9 October, organised by the Royal Institution of Naval Architects (RINA) and Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN).
This article appeared in SWZ|Maritime’s November 2024 issue. It was written by Hans Huisman, Teamleader Human Factors, Maritime Operations at MARIN, h.huisman@marin.nl.
The programme of the conference covered a broad range of human factors applications such as human factors in design of future operations, safety, training and team collaboration. A moderator introduced a session of three presentations and each session ended with a panel discussion. The conference was followed by additional workshops in MARIN’s Seven Oceans Simulator centre (SOSc) on 10 October.
Over the two days, this led to many interesting discussions and participants actively participated in these. So, the invitation in the welcoming speech to make it “your conference” became truth and was well appreciated by all.
Keynote speaker Rafet Emek Kurt (University of Strathclyde, UK) kicked off by asking the question whether human factors is not just common sense. Of course, preaching to the choir, the audience did not agree. Kurt continued by stating that seeing human factors as common sense is a dangerous oversimplification of a discipline, which builds on solid theory, models, methods and knowledge, all rooted in science.
He gave practical examples of promising looking designs on the designer table, but resulting in serious accidents in operation. He stated that integrating human factors in the design, development and operation in the maritime industry is vital to create a safe and efficient operation.
Next, he sketched the future challenges for the maritime industry including automation, autonomy, decarbonisation, and staff shortages to name a few. All topics requiring a new way of working and more so: a new way of collaboration between the crew and the technology surrounding them.
Also read: SWZ|Maritime’s November 2024 issue: Digitalisation and offshore energy
Human centred design
On the topic of human centred design, a number of presentations were given. One key issue in all these was to have a good understanding of the actual operation as a researcher. Before designing, researchers stepped on board of vessels to connect with the crew and get a good understanding of their operational challenges.
Prototype evaluations were presented both in bridge simulators and on board vessels. A nice example was the moving base simulator study focusing on preventing container loss by studying the crew decision making process on board in adverse wind and wave conditions (Heike Diepeveen, MARIN).
In the field of augmented reality an operational trial was presented where crew members were wearing augmented reality goggles presenting navigational information in the outside view (Floris van den Oever, University of Bergen, Norway). As part of this augmented reality topic, the Open Bridge library of Human-Machine Interface elements was presented (Kjetil Nordby, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway).
Of course, introducing automation in the operation was also covered. For example, a theoretical concept of Holons (a combination of a human and cyber element in an overall system) was explained (Nicole Taylor, Stellenbosch University, South Africa).
A more practical approach was a study in providing collision avoidance solutions to an operator including the reasoning of the complex automated algorithm. The goal was to let the system explain to the operator why it has chosen a certain solution (Koen van de Merwe, DNV, Norway). A very different way of getting the crew into the design process was 3D printing miniature ship bridges based on crew input (Yemao Man, ABB Sweden).
Also read: VIDEO: MARIN’s new Simulator Centre building delivered
Safety
Job Brüggen (Air Traffic Control, the Netherlands) kicked off the second day of the conference on safety with an inspiring and somewhat provoking keynote about safety culture in aviation. Now that he stepped into the maritime world for this conference, he looked back on the history of the maritime domain, spanning a few thousand years explaining that he was coming from a very young aviation domain of just more than 100 years.
Safety is not only to be addressed in the operation, but it starts during the early design phase. Design decisions taken in the initial design can have significant impact on the safety level when getting into operation. Where Brüggen focused on current operations and the tension between commercial profit and creating a safe operation, other presenters took a look into the future.
For example, how can we make sure autonomous vessel operations are safe? Kirsty Lyncj (University of Southampton, UK), Alistair Frizell (BMT, UK), Stephan Procee (NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands) and Shunqiang Xu (University of Twente, the Netherlands) all took a different perspective on the human role in autonomous vessels and the ways in which this role can be introduced and explored.
Training
In the training session, there was an example of cross domain training: aeronautical and maritime personnel in a simulated search and rescue setup including a helicopter simulator and bridge simulators illustrated the advantage of combined trainings.
Subsequent stories from real life search and rescue operations by Oda Schliebusch-Jacob (German Search and Rescue Service, Gemany) kept the audience quiet. “Never turn back” as the supposed paradigm says, illustrating the great strength, both mental and physical, of the lifeboatmen. Or does it? The essence of the presentation was to explain a process including working procedures, which was implemented with the intention not to strive for the impossible, but to have objective decision making in the organisation on various levels, to go or not to go out for a SAR operation.
Of course, these processes and procedures will need to be applied under high time pressure, limited amount of information available and emotional pressure of possible lives at stake. Therefore, training in a multi actor environment and on a multi organisational level was pursued to reduce the need to say “never turn back” as a basis for decision making (Neil Hancock, RINA).
Also read: Newcleo, Fincantieri and RINA look into feasibility of nuclear marine propulsion
Cyber
Since automation, digitisation and autonomous shipping gets a lot of attention from a technical point of view, a human factors’ perspective and of course, from an economical point of view. One topic to be addressed is cyber security. These developments require digital communication, which is vulnerable to people and nations with bad intentions.
It might not be obvious, but also in cyber security, the human role is essential. In detecting “something is wrong” and being able to pinpoint it concerns a cyber attack requires well informed and trained staff. Yasin Burak Kurt (University of Strathclyde, UK) presented his work in studying people’s responses to simulated failures due to cyber attack.
Also read: Nevesbu and IV trial floating substation at MARIN
Workshops
On the third day of the conference, three workshops were held at MARIN, where participants got the opportunity to get some handson experience in human factors research. Niels de Groot (Ergos, the Netherlands) gave a workshop on ship bridge design using wooden mock-ups representing the bridge instrument panel. Having a large variety of dummy controls and instruments, the participants could design the layout of the operator working position with some guidance from De Groot. Moving around the controls, lively discussions started about pros and cons of each setup.
Next to this, Niklas van Duinen (MARIN) gave a workshop about measuring human performance. Two participants were instrumented with eyetrackers, heart rate sensors and an emotion recogniser. They were asked to sail a track on a fast small ship simulator.
After stepping down from the simulator, the group viewed and got explanation about the recorded data on a large wall display, zooming in on physiological data of the two participants in combination with simulator data. One of the participants summarised this as ‘you don’t just have some equipment here, it’s really a materialised human factors vision at work’.
A third workshop, given by Giorgio Ballestin (MARIN) was about designing the layout of the interior of a vessel. Putting in or out walls, doors, furniture, etc., a layout was created one could walk around in with virtual reality, experiencing the vessel from the inside. After the workshops, a tour of the new Seven Oceans Simulator centre of MARIN made the audience of human factors researchers feel quite envious.
Not just a single event
The Human Factors Conference 2024 was a success and offered an excellent opportunity for an international set of human factors specialists, naval architects, bridge officers and others to get together and discuss recent developments. It focused on lessons learned from interventions and applied research that was successful, and maybe even more interesting, unexpected or bad results.
With cross domain experience, valuable lessons were shared with the participants. Both RINA and MARIN have expressed their intention to continue their combined efforts not only by organising future conferences, but also with online activities to keep the group of professionals connected and let them share experiences.
Picture (top): Exploring the inside of a ship using virtual reality (picture MARIN).
