Enhancing navigational safety through increasing situational awareness and teamwork in the bridge

It is well reported in the literature that more than 80% of shipping accidents are attributed to human and organisational factors. Marine accidents are the result of error chains rather than single events. Prevention of accidents has gained the deserved attention by the end of the last century, as the maritime community has realised that despite all the increased safety standards and technological developments, accidents are still occurring, and the system is not resilient to errors at various levels. Furthermore, it has been often ignored that the human element of the maritime system has not been evolving the in the same way that technology is developing; and with the physical capabilities and the limitations of the human is being overlooked. It is considering that 60% of the accident are classed as grounding and collisions, which need to improve navigational safety.;This research aims to minimise the human and organisational factors in the bridge by enhancing the bridge team interaction and increasing the situational awareness of the bridge team in total. This will increase the bridge team performance to communicate and optimise teamwork between bridge team member to avoid accidents. Moreover, this thesis looks into Bridge Resource Management (BRM) elements and its deficiency and develop a new course that is flexible for all bridge team members to increase their efficiency and improve the team's decision-making based on the interpretation of the situation. The novelty of this research is to develop a BRM course to cover all bridge team members to enhance the bridge team performance to be similar to the aviation industry, which requires all aviation pilot and cabin crew to participant in Crew Resource Management (CRM) to be eligible for working in the aeroplanes.;The validation of the new course's effectiveness has been utilised in the full-mission ship's bridge navigational simulator compared to the regular course. Educational scenarios based on real accidents has been established for the validation experiment to evaluate the bridge team participants' performance and actions to avoid the collision.It is well reported in the literature that more than 80% of shipping accidents are attributed to human and organisational factors. Marine accidents are the result of error chains rather than single events. Prevention of accidents has gained the deserved attention by the end of the last century, as the maritime community has realised that despite all the increased safety standards and technological developments, accidents are still occurring, and the system is not resilient to errors at various levels. Furthermore, it has been often ignored that the human element of the maritime system has not been evolving the in the same way that technology is developing; and with the physical capabilities and the limitations of the human is being overlooked. It is considering that 60% of the accident are classed as grounding and collisions, which need to improve navigational safety.;This research aims to minimise the human and organisational factors in the bridge by enhancing the bridge team interaction and increasing the situational awareness of the bridge team in total. This will increase the bridge team performance to communicate and optimise teamwork between bridge team member to avoid accidents. Moreover, this thesis looks into Bridge Resource Management (BRM) elements and its deficiency and develop a new course that is flexible for all bridge team members to increase their efficiency and improve the team's decision-making based on the interpretation of the situation. The novelty of this research is to develop a BRM course to cover all bridge team members to enhance the bridge team performance to be similar to the aviation industry, which requires all aviation pilot and cabin crew to participant in Crew Resource Management (CRM) to be eligible for working in the aeroplanes.;The validation of the new course's effectiveness has been utilised in the full-mission ship's bridge navigational simulator compared to the regular course. Educational scenarios based on real accidents has been established for the validation experiment to evaluate the bridge team participants' performance and actions to avoid the collision