Abstract
One of the missions of the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) is to promote safety at sea through the prevention and mitigation of marine accidents. One means of preventing accidents is through the thorough investigation of the causes of marine casualties, the analyses of which can illuminate needed safety improvements. A study was conducted with the purpose of learning more about the USCG casualty investigation process, analyzing the data entry process, and making recommendations for improvements to the current computer system and the casualty investigation process. The study identified four major factors in the USCG system, particularly related to the reporting of human-related causes, which may have broad application to other safety professionals who contemplate the use of similar automated reporting and analysis systems. These widely applicable factors were:
the reliability and completeness of the data can be affected by the investigators' understanding of the purpose and scope of the accident database; the collection of human factors data can be overlooked and oversimplified; the taxonomy/classification scheme affects data collected as well as data reported; the computer interface used for data entry can affect the reliability, validity, and completeness of the human factors data.
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