Application of fuzzy cognitive maps to investigate the contributors of maritime grounding accidents

The maritime sector is often criticised for being reactive in safety where safety measures are considered after major accidents. However, a new safety approach is becoming popular which focuses not only what goes wrong but also what goes right. This approach allows us to identify required abilities from crew for resilient shipping operations. In order to better identify these necessary resilience abilities, this paper aims to assess the factors affecting grounding accidents by using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs), which calculates and evaluates the individual weights of the underlying factors involved in grounding accidents. FCMs appear to be a suitable approach since it can model complex relationships between these contributing factors. Therefore, this study is focused on past accidents on general cargo vessels. General cargo vessels were selected for this study as information was provided regarding 122 accidents in this vessel category. Then, the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) database was analysed to obtain the weightings for the contributors in grounding accidents, which help us to understand in which areas resilience abilities are required the most. The results indicate that Fatigue is the highest contributor into grounding accidents in general cargo vessels