Definitions of human factor analysis for the maritime safety management process

There has been a growing recognition that human errors, rather than equipment problems, have been responsible for approximately 62% of pollution and marine accidents over the past 15 years. Human factors in the following categories are resulting in 15% rating error, 30% deck officer error, 2% engine officer error, 8% pilot error and 7% shore-based personnel error. In the maritime domain the root causes of accidents and the casualties can be sub-classified as mechanical failure or in general terms reliability failure (non-human) and the human error that has direct effect on the accident occurrence. At this stage human error can be classified in three major categories with the same approximation of the STCW Code 1995 amendments. The first category is operational based human errors, the second category is the management based human errors and the third category is the combination of the first and second category that might cause a considerable accident or disaster by triggering chain events. In this respect the terminology of an incident might be described as a triggering event, such as a human error or a mechanical failure that creates an unsafe condition and might result in an accident. Hence the root cause, the immediate cause, the incident, accident, consequence and its impact can be defined as the casual chain. Accidents that occur in complex systems are determined by internal and external factors and the term triggering event has a great significance, rather than causal event, to describe the final stage of the accident chain. The aim of this paper is to categorize a quick and easy method for the collection of knowledge about human error in the maritime safety management process and the description of the human factor using accident reports as empirical material.