M’AIDER: MARITIME AIDS ’ DEVELOPMENT FOR EMERGENCY RESPONSES

This paper reports on the outcomes of recent research carried out on accidents and incidents instigated to create a range of scenarios for training applications in full-mission simulators relating to emergency situations. In the IMO MSC 82 [2006] meeting a great deal of emphasis was placed on the role human elements play in the cause of accidents at sea, focusing particularly on how human errors have led to great losses of life and property. It has also been acknowledged that emergency situations and the use of simulators have not been fully taken into consideration in the training of merchant navy officers. This industry would benefit immensely from a user-friendly/accessible training tool and programme for its sea-going and port personnel that would focus on emergency situations; the causes for these situations and how they are handled. The research presented here makes special references to the Leonardo Safety on Sea project [SOS, 2005-07], which concerned the updating of Merchant navy Education and Training (MET) programmes for deck and engineering officers. The SOS project identified deficiencies in maritime education and training, which M’AIDER intends to remedy by considering emergency situations specifically for navigation to avoid collisions, grounding and some other dangerous situations. Special references are made to the plans to gather existing knowledge regarding accidents and incident