Monitoring and identification of DP operators behavioural traits and common errors during simulator training

Abstract

The article presents factors influencing decision making by Dynamic Positioning Operator (DPO) and statistics of the DPOs behaviour in an emergency situation. Considering that supply operation is performed by a DP vessel at a distance comparable to its width of the hull to the installation, unit, or another vessel, the thruster failure may lead to a rapidly developing incident such as collision, pollution, or human injuries. Based on the IMO guidelines on formal safety assessment authors suggested a risk model of platform supply operation in dynamic positioning mode. It is shown that different approaches shall be applied for rule-making and active decision support applications. While rulemaking can be mainly based on retrospective incident-based data, decision support shall be developed on the basis of the dynamic state of the system. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the nature of the human element in the specific operation to build up proper technological and organizational barriers to prevent the forthcoming critical error.