Risk Analysis of Ship Navigation by Use of Cognitive Simulation

This paper presents a cognitive simulation approach to risk analysis for maritime operations. For this purpose, a ship navigator’s cognitive model was constructed for simple course-tracking task based on cognitive task analysis of experimental navigation sessions using a maritime simulator. It describes the dynamic interaction between the navigator’s cognitive processes and the states during manoeuvring. In addition to performance modelling of normal operations, the model is equipped with a navigator-error generating process to simulate identification error of vessel position and heading and look-ahead error of the future track. The cognitive model was examined in terms of its descriptive and predictive abilities of ship motion and navigator’s behaviour through simulation runs using identical scenarios for the experimental navigation sessions. Many varieties of simulation were then performed with different navigation scenarios changing the navigator’s individual factors and manoeuvring conditions to identify critical risk factors at sea. Based on these results, we discuss the possibility of applying the cognitive simulation approach to risk analysis in ship navigation.