Ecological Interface Design for efficient Maritime Traffic Supervision

Prior to a voyage, a berth to berth planning is required to ensure safe sailing and also to have the autopilot setup correctly. During a voyage traffic supervision is one of the most safety critical tasks of navigators. Behavior prediction of other vessels based on few information and experience consumes a substantial amount of workload. The continuous increasing maritime traffic makes supervision a challenging task. This contribution elaborates a monitoring interface for maritime traffic supervision based on an Abstraction Hierarchy (AH) as part of an Ecological Interface Design process and compares the AH-driven design improvements with a mathematically derived solution-space design, originally targeted to air traffic observation, and with the current maritime standard HMI, the Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECIDS). With the EID design subjects were on average more accurate and faster in identifying an overall critical situation and also more accurate in correctly identifying the most critical vessel if compared to the current state of the art (ECDIS) design.