A New Approach for Human Factor Integration into Ship Design Process

Ship safety and operations are driving issues of ship design and it is well recognized that such performances are strongly related to Human Factor (HF). In the paper a methodology to integrate HF into the ship design process since an early stage is envisaged, with the aim to improve the overall ship resilience when dealing with uncertainty of performance implied by HF element. The System-Theoretic Accident Model Process (STAMP, Leveson 2003) is investigated as a suitable methodology able to provide a significant asset in such perspective. The approach is widely applied in many industrial and transportation fields but in order to better understand its application into the marine context, a specific application will be briefly commented. In the attempt to define a comprehensive procedure, as a preliminary overview, some selected models suitable to classify the human behavior will be considered with specific focus on the reasons for performance degrade and/or uncertainty.