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“Although mortality rates for seafaring have declined greatly over the course of the 20th century, seafaring has continued to remain amongst the most hazardous of occupations. Merchant shipping is known to have a high rate of fatalities caused by occupational accidents and maritime disasters [1] and [2]. Human and organizational factors account for the vast majority of unanticipated significant problems associated with the design, construction, and operation of ships. For example, Moore et al. [3] found that most accidents result

from a compounding sequence of breakdowns in physical components, human error, and www.selleckchem.com/products/3-methyladenine.html organizational failures. Technology and automation are often introduced to increase efficiency and safety, reduce workload, reduce human involvement and the effect of human error. However, the human-automation interaction can have consequences for human work and safety as the automation can create new error pathways and delay opportunities for error detection and recovery [4]. The human role in the system is complex since a person’s individual characteristics and states, abilities and competencies affect decision-making and performance on board. The human in the system is both error inducing and an important source of expertise for decision-making and recovery [5]. While the human and system aspects are vital for safety, the organizational aspect also has a fundamental influence on safety [6]. Crizotinib clinical trial The capsizing of

this website the Herald of Free Enterprise just outside the Belgian port of Zeebrügge in 1987, with the loss of 193 lives, is one important example. It emphasizes the organizational aspect of having a poor safety culture on different levels in a shipping company [7]. Corporate safety cultures shaped by the degree of commitment to safety on the management level are often highlighted as the overriding factor for safety performance. Conflicting

safety and production goals, ineffective communication, time pressure, and fierce competition in a complex industry environment, can very likely lead to the stretching of safety margins (often unconsciously), and the migration of behavior towards the boundary of acceptable performance [8], also known as a “drift into failure”. A safety culture that stresses proactive measures for maintaining safety in an organization is a vital counterforce to the possible drift into failure. Thus, to maintain and improve safety and efficiency in safety critical maritime organizations, knowledge is needed about the safety culture and the way it is expressed in attitudes, behaviors, and artifacts. Questionnaires developed for this purpose are often used when assessing an organization’s safety culture. The analysis and interpretation of questionnaire results can provide more knowledge about the maritime safety culture concept and contribute to the formulation of effective interventions to maintain and improve safety and safety culture on board ships.