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Accident investigations indicate that the majority of ship accidents are in one way or another caused by human error. The underlying causes are manifold, and include aspects related to difficult working environments, inadequate crew competence, and the lack of crew-centered design of equipment, working spaces and/or human machine interfaces. This paper presents some of the results from the EU funded research project CyClaDes (Crew-centred Design and Operations of Ships and Ship Systems). This 3-year project involved a multi-disciplinary team of 14 partners from equipment suppliers, research institutes and classification societies and was concluded in September 2015. The project addressed pressing issues in the shipping industry regarding the need for improvements to the current lack of implementation of crew-centered design principles in the design of ship workspaces and equipment. Specifically, the team worked on six technical work packages with a focus on all the key steps in the ship systems/equipment design and operation lifecycle, the stakeholders, where the barriers to human element integration into system/equipment design and operation occur; and how to best locate, produce, disseminate, and apply human element knowledge within the overall context of shipping.

In the past two decades, the need to address human factors in shipping through integration of ergonomics in the design of ships and shipboard equipment has increased significantly as a result of the technological development of modern ships. The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the United Nations’ specialized organizationfor ship safety issues, has adopted a vision to address human factors as a key element for the improvement of maritime safety, and in that context acknowledges the human element as complex and multi-dimensional. IMO’s standards focus on the avoidance of human and organization error. But in spite of this, and despite the availability of qualified guidance on maritime human factors, there is little evidence of what could be seen as a comprehensive regulatory framework for crew-centered design, i.e. a design practice where ships and ships’ equipment is explicitly designed with human operator usability as an integral part of the design process. Recently, a European Commission sponsored project CyClaDes has made an attempt to address this paradox from a number of vantage points: An accident analysis, interviews with mariners (n=23), and short visits on board 5 vessels have been conducted to identify knowledge that provides insights into crew involvement in design, which, in turn, have been used to develop five training packages as one outcome of the project. CyClaDes - Crew-centered design and operation of ship and ship systems

This paper proposes a human centered design process for the marine industry to support naval architects and marine engineers in the integration of human element considerations in the design of ship systems. The proposed Human Centered Design methodology derives from codes and standards, including those for equipment certification. A case study, consisting of the design of a mooring winch and control station, is developed to illustrate the proposed approach. The referred case study is selected since a significant number of fatal accidents and severe injuries occur during mooring operations. Furthermore, the results of a human centered intervention on the identified deficiencies should be easily perceived by industry stakeholders, thereby increasing the stakeholder's willingness to integrate the human element in systems design. To this end, design deficiencies identified in the mooring workspace and control station of a containership are first presented. Afterwards, two control panel layouts are recommended following the proposed Human Centered Design approach. A preliminary assessment of the control panel layouts regarding their compliance with existing standards and guidelines is carried out. Additionally, this study indicates that mooring workspace and equipment design deficiencies are related to the limited deck space, which is primarily maximized for ship cargo.