Citation

Hetherington C, Flin RH., Mearns KJ. J. Saf. Res. 2006; 37(4): 401-411.

Affiliation

The Industrial Psychology Research Centre, School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Kings College, Old Aberdeen, AB24 2UB.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, U.S. National Safety Council, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jsr.2006.04.007

PMID

17046789

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: There are numerous diverse papers that have addressed issues within maritime safety; to date there has been no comprehensive review of this literature to aggregate the causal factors within accidents in shipping and surmise current knowledge. METHODS: This paper reviewed the literature on safety in three key areas: common themes of accidents, the influence of human error, and interventions to make shipping safer. The review included 20 studies of seafaring across the following areas: fatigue, stress, health, situation awareness, teamwork, decision-making, communication, automation, and safety culture. RESULTS: The review identifies the relative contributions of individual and organizational factors in shipping accidents, and also presents the methodological issues with previous research. CONCLUSIONS: The paper concludes that monitoring and modifying the human factors issues presented in this paper could contribute to maritime safety performance. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: This review illustrates which human factors issues are prevalent in incidents therefore this gives shipping practitioners a focus for interventions.

Language: en