On the development and measurement of human factors complex network for maritime accidents: A case of ship groundings

Abstract

Human factors from organizational aspects to unsafe behaviors of the crew on board form a directed complex network reflecting the evolution of maritime accidents. The present study aims to develop a human factors complex network contributing to maritime accidents. First, a maritime accident scenario is defined based on 104 ship grounding accident reports, then the human factors contributing to ship groundings are identified and structured within HFACS using grounding theory. Second, chi-square tests and odd ratio analysis are employed to capture the interrelationships among these human factors within HFACS, which are then represented as nodes, edges, and edge weights in network. The topological parameters including degree, clustering coefficients, and node importance are measured in the end for the human factors complex network. The results indicate that the factor “Inadequate safety management by the shipping company” belonged to Organizational influences has the highest influence on the factors “Not taken safe ship speeds”, “Improper lashing and stowage”, “Failure to implement the planned route”, and “Failure to keep navigational AIDS in normally open operation’ that belonged to Unsafe acts, while these unsafe acts have the highest PageRank value, affirming their direct role in causing maritime accidents. Results from this study are valuable for understanding of the network propagation mechanism of human factor risks in maritime accidents, and can also offer guidance to shipping companies, maritime authorities, and relevant stakeholders in establishing and optimizing human factor barriers in such accidents.