Voice Communication Systems Impact on Navigating Officers

Abstract

The tasks of an officer of the watch (OOW) on complex ships during navigation in coastal areas may be very challenging. Almost all the tasks require substantial information processing and timely decision making. Every distracting element should be avoided during navigation. Every call, made through any communication system, activates a new process that the OOW needs to conduct. The new process may interrupt a previously started task. In case of too many incoming calls, the workload of the OOW may increase significantly, thus, their situational awareness may be compromised and the risk of errors may increase. The objective of this research was to analyze the impact of incoming voice calls on the OOW. The research methods used include a questionnaire survey and a series of interviews with experienced officers. The main outcomes refer to the average frequency of incoming calls, duration of conversations and subjective assessment of their influence. The results indicate that, during one watch, an officer needs to answer 14 calls that last 16.19 min altogether. However, the officers consider 45% of calls made during watch keeping as distracting. A possible call management system with the aim to reduce distractions made by low priority calls is proposed in this paper.

Analysis and Optimisation of Best Practice for Proper Lookout at Night

“…Surprisingly, the UK's Maritime and Coastguard Agency [45] recognises Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) equipment, completion of administrative tasks [47] on bridge and routine testing of bridge equipment as 'distractions' to the watchkeeping officers' primary duty of keeping a proper lookout. However, no one appears to propose a solution to overcome them albeit recognising that these distractions potentially lead to low levels of SA [42]. This is where the solutions presented in this paper are not only relevant but fill in a long standing, vital, yet fundamental gap in maritime watchkeepers' skills.…”

“…Each navigational task [42] performed by a watchkeeper requires substantial multiple sources of information to be processed. Based upon an individual's cognitive ability, they can probably choose the source of this information but if overwhelmed by the visual or audible information stimuli, the decision-making is almost always likely to be affected [8], leading possibly to human error.…”

Human Factor in Navigation: Overview of Cognitive Load Measurement during Simulated Navigational Tasks

“…An interesting observation is the gap of the BVP pulse shortly after the initiation of the disturbance factor. The gap indicates an expectation due to real-life experience that the alarm is not essential [24] and will be silenced shortly, or that the participant's working memory dismissing this sound as likely a false alarm [25]. That is not the same as ignoring an alarm but is yet another variable that likely, at times, affects the behavior of people in perilous situations.…”

Analysis of Marine-Pilot Biometric Data Recordings during Port-Approach Using a Full-Mission Simulator

“…Additionally, a high workload is caused by various disturbing factors that divert an officer’s attention. Typical disturbing factors during navigation are bridge alarms and various calls and e-mails, which affect the navigator’s situational awareness [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]. The density of the disturbing factors (in each time window) increases the cognitive load.…”