Aiming to implement smart solutions for a safe and sustainable shipping, the EU-funded EfficienSea2 project has finished a full-scale simulation of a wide variety of e-Navigation solutions. The simulations, which involved 8 navigators and took a total of four days, were conducted at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and focused on the human factors in e-Navigation.
Multiple services, ranging from a digitalised form of Navigational Warnings to an interactive VTS-reporting system, were tested by the mariners on a full-bridge simulator, while wearing eye-trackers and GSR devices to detect emotional changes.
The simulations aim to ensure that the new services are optimised, to guarantee fewer burdens for the navigators when exploiting digital tools for navigation, explains Mads Friis Sørensen, Project Manager for EfficienSea2 and Senior Adviser at the Danish Maritime Authority. As he explained, the solutions under development aim to relieve pressure, so that navigators can focus on performing their primary duty, which is to sail the ship safely.
As human factors testing is an integral part of the EfficienSea2 project, it includes Force Technology and Chalmers University of Technology, both leading in the field of human element and human-machine interfaces.
In addition, the EfficienSea2 project has built the web-based platform BalticWeb, which was used during the simulation to present the new services to the mariners. They were first asked to plan their route using tools from the BalticWeb and then later had the chance to use the different services when doing the full-bridge simulation.
“BalticWeb is an essential demonstrator for e-Navigation solutions and it reveals the possibilities of the solutions developed in the EfficienSea2 project. It is an ‘easy to use’ map-based platform for navigators, and for the industry it is easy to adapt many of the underlying digital services displayed on BalticWeb so they can be presented on other maritime platforms,” Mads Friis Sørensen explains.
