Perceptions of Integrated Electronic Marine Systems – A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Integrated electronic marine systems have been put forward as one way of reducing information overload for officers of the watch and other personnel who work on ships' bridges or in fishing wheelhouses. It may be that such systems will improve safety records which, in the case of fishing, are amongst the worst in the world. This article builds on previous work about issues for the systems designer by using a small study of fishing skippers to ascertain their perceptions of using integrated electronic systems in the wheelhouse. Semi-structured interviews were used with 11 skippers from one port who were all familiar with integrated electronic marine systems but did not use them on their vessels. The main reasons for this were a perception of unreliability of both the hardware and the software, together with concerns about data integrity and user control.2. marine electronic aids; 3. systems reliability; 4. user control.

Fishing Skippers' Perceptions of Integrated Electronic Marine Systems

“…5 metres LOA, (Mills, 2007) but where the vessels in the present study were fitted with IEMS, the skippers found them useful and helpful for both fishing and navigation. This is relevant to the use of IEMS, since the larger vessels travelled to more distant fishing grounds as well as into different types of waters from the smaller vessels which often worked shorter trips of a more inshore nature.…”

“…As the questions in this study mirrored those of previous work (Mills, 2007), it was felt that there was no need to pilot them again ; this is usual procedure with semistructured interviews and questionnaires which have served well previously.…”

“…The earlier study by Mills (2007) which, in turn, used work from another study (Mills, 2006) focussed on five areas associated with IEMS. Of these, hardware reliability was of some concern among the participants with one skipper being very vociferous in his comments.…”

“…Most of these smaller vessels are large enough to have an IEMS and since these vessels caught nephthrops (prawns) except for one which specialised in haddock and cod, they form an interesting comparison with the vessels used in previous work (Mills, 2007), which vessels also fished for prawns but in a smaller (and inshore) way. Six skippers regularly fished on vessels in the 60 metres to 71 metres LOA while five skippers worked on vessels in the 20 metres to 27 .…”

“…Before relating the study undertaken here, we turn to a short account of previous work undertaken in order to contextualise the present study. However, the study (Mills, 2007) had severe limitations ; in particular, the study's participants did not have IEMS on their fishing vessels and while some of the participants had used IEMS in other situations such as the local lifeboat, none had used one while fishing. In particular, that study found that fishing skippers believed that lack of hardware and software reliability, together with the way in which the system chooses the data which are displayed, could lead to a decrease in safety overall due to a feeling of lack of control by the users.…”