Avoiding collisions at sea - Pareto analysis

Abstract

It has been almost 40 years since the 1972 International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea known as COLREGs were introduced, and regular amendments have been taking place accordingly ever since. Over the last half-century despite improvements in navigational AIDS such as ARPA and attempts to raise the standards of training through the various STCW conventions, collisions still occur. Many studies and accident reports indicate that the accidents were caused by either human error or are associated with human error as a result of inappropriate human responses. Collisions commonly represent many of these accidents. This paper discusses key issues regarding the application of Collisions Regulations (COLREGs) at sea, reports on the outcome of a recent EU funded eCOLREGs project known as ACTs and a report on a Pareto Analysis supporting the work being carried out in a new project called ACTS Plus which considers more complex cases where there are several rules applied or where there are more than two ships involved in a collision. This paper does not attempt to examine each and every rule included in regulations but the EU Project ACTs and ACTS Plus online platform include some 300 scenarios, many developed and videoed in ship simulators, for those interested to review and explore more. This paper discusses the importance of studying cases where the applications of certain rules or where more than one rule applies are open to misinterpretation. © 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.