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dwelled in the areas of regulations and technologies.Besides the current robust system of safety guidelines and regulations in place to enhance maritime safety, advanced technology has enabled shipboard system optimisation for better ergonomics and human-machine interface. The human element in ship operations is however deemed essential towards any design and improvement of systems – particularly as the industry trends towards unmanned /autonomous ship technologies.“The human element should never be removed entirely from the equation. Instead, it must remain at the core of smart ship technologies and operations”, President of the Singapore Shipping Association (SSA) Mr Esben Poulsson emphasised during his Keynote Address at the SMI Seminar 2016 on Smart Ships in April.Along with the inevitable shift in seafarers’ profile where a new generation of officers and crew helm bigger ships equipped with complex shipboard systems, it is a huge area of interest for research to enhance safety and reduce risks involved.With thousands of ship traffic traversing and calling at Singapore waters, Maritime Singapore is one of the busiest ports in the world. There are therefore concerns for maritime safety within our port waters and regional waters, such as the Straits of Malacca and Singapore (SOMS) being one ofthe busiest shipping lanes in the world. Vessel traffic management (VTM) plays acrucial role towards ensuring safety in port waters. Another research project under the SAM Research Programme led by Associate Professor Chen Chun-Hsien at NTU looks at human factors involved in VTM to determine causal factors and preventive interventions.“We have conducted field observations in local VTM facilities where traffic flows and VTM operators’ activities were observed and recorded”. Associate Professor Chen shared that the experimental findings would enable his research team to identify tasks associated with high frequency and risk exposures. Interventions for these specific tasks would then be proposed.“Unstructured interviews with VTM operators and analysis of accident and incident data will be conducted in the next six months or so”. These would help provide in-depth insights into operators’ experiences and additional scientific data towards Associate Professor Chen’s on- going research work.With Singapore being an established International Maritime Centre and global maritime hub, several shipping companies and ship managers are based in Singapore with strong business and operational functions.Another project under the SAM Research Programme explores a computer-basedsystem for predictive health, safety, security and environmental (HSSE) risk management in the context of tanker shipping and ship management. The research team led by Associate Professor Wong Yiik Diew at NTU explores human reliability analysis of seafarers in the area of operational safety within the tanker shipping sector.“We have proposed eight common performance conditions (CPCs) based on the root causes of tanker shipping accidents/incidents recorded by our industry collaborator – an international tanker shipping company in Singapore”. Associate Professor Wong explained that the proposed measure would better reflect actual work characteristics and environment in tanker shipping.“A quantified cognitive reliability and error analysis method (CREAM) based on the proposed CPCs is developed to evaluate seafarers’ human error probability during tanker shipping operations”. Improved measures can be carried out to improve seafarers’ reliability for a safer and more reliable shipping industry.Through the various maritime research projects, SMI hopes to promote greater knowledge and awareness of the role of the human element in maritime safety and how it should be prioritised and complemented with business and technical objectives in the maritime industry.|17FEATURES“The human element should never be removed entirely from the equation. Instead, it must remain at the core of smart ship technologies and operations”ISSUE 51 | WAVES