A review on human factors in maritime transportation using seafarers' physiological data

Human failure is one of the dominant causes of maritime accidents. However, the relationship between seafarers' operations and mental workload remains largely unclear. It is meaningful to investigate it based on the analysis of seafarers' physiological data when on duty. For this purpose, a preliminary study on this subject is carried out. Research techniques of human factors related to neurophysiological measurements are analyzed in the context of ship operators' behaviors. It suggests that a coherent sequence of changes on Electroencephalogram (EEG) and Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIFS) signals exists during the transition from different sorts of human factor concepts. The objective of the review is to summarise human factors in maritime, and on how particular neurophysiological features could be utilized in human factor concepts of “mental workload”, “attention”, “fatigue”, etc. Operators' performance can be evaluated based on the fluctuations in physiological data. By these findings, future research on human factors in maritime would focus on quantitative methods to mine physiological data collected by devices, to optimise the crew training system based on simulators. One of the most important subjects is to identify the human failures, to optimize mission assignment, and to reduce the possibility of maritime accidents with seafarers' physiological data.