Increasing Safety of Demanding Offshore Operations through Usability

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To increase safety of demanding offshore operations through focusing on usability and the human factor (HF) propose many challenges. The research community is small, however by adding focus from industry to this area by actually considering the operator's work situation and provide supportive solutions, one has come many steps closer to a safer safety critical operation. When developing solutions that reduce the human error rate, the equipment must be tested and statistical measurements from the tests com pared. By establishing the first maritime usability laboratory in the middle of the maritime cluster in Norway, it is possible to collect the data needed for the next generation of HF and usability tested equipment. This will be a major benefit for Rolls- Royce, who has this area as one of the priority areas of the future. By being inspired from other safety critical industries (nuclear, aviation and car), this project is in the interdisciplinary nature and requires expertise from most areas of the maritim e cluster. The R&D challenges that this project faces is to draw information out of the many disciplines researched, to establish a solid usability testing laboratory that supports collection of large amount of data for statistical processing, to find the suited selection of tools for quantitative and qualitative data analysis and methods to reduce the operator's stress-level during a demanding offshore operation. This project will have a key role in developing the maritime usability research community an d the results from this research will be utilised by Rolls-Royce to build a solid base for the development of the next generation of operator stations, equipment and software for vessels carrying out complex offshore operations.