A study on analysis of characteristics of ships navigators' look-out by using OZT

Abstract

Human error is a main cause of collision accidents between ships. And most of them are caused by ship navigators' keeping an improper look-out, leading to missing the presence of other ships or not realizing dangerous situations until too late. In general, experienced navigators keep track of vessels posing collision threats quite adequately. Therefore, identifying and understanding the characteristics of experienced navigators' look-out methods will certainly lead to a reduction in sea accidents. In this study, the authors analyzed the data obtained by ship-handling simulation experiments using Obstacle Zone by Target (OZT) algorithms for examining the differences of the characteristics of look-out methods between experienced navigators and inexperienced navigators.