Abstract
Most accidents, some resulting in technological disasters, have human factors as root-causes. Some of these are mental biases related with human cognitive limitations, while others concern group decision making processes. The case of maritime incidents is of particular interest, due to the typically harsh environment at sea and the likelihood of disasters that may result. The outcomes of maritime accidents involving socio-technical systems – ships and maritime infrastructures – may be classified as severe, if not catastrophic. Analysing known maritime disasters provide insight for prevention, as well as the best way to manage crisis. Incidents with root causes linked to explicit knowledge may be controlled. When causes, however, are grounded on mind bias and subconscious processes, it becomes difficult to foresee the potential disaster, and provide for adequate preventive measures. An analysis of a number of disasters, recent and ancient, provides insight for human factors focused educational and training programmes.
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Acknowledgments
The work was funded by the European Union EMFF-BlueEconomy-2018 under 863713-MARLEM Project and by the Portuguese Navy.
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Água, P.B., Frias, A., Simões-Marques, M. (2021). Mental Traps Behind Maritime Disasters. In: Nunes, I.L. (eds) Advances in Human Factors and System Interactions. AHFE 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 265. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79816-1_1
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