Container handling in docks: safety and human factors

Over the last twenty years research on safety issues has demonstrated the fundamental importance of human factors in the design of transport systems. Up until recently, however, little attention had been paid to human factors in maritime safety, on the one hand because of the lack of awareness of operators as to their relevance in this specific sector, on the other because of the lack of suitable tools able to guarantee the results achieved in other areas of transport. Regarding the latter, there is a need for essential tools at the scientific, operational and management levels, especially of data banks, that provide the detailed information required for properly identifying the safety parameters by means of well-established procedures. This paper aims to highlight on the one hand the role of human factors in dock safety and on the other the inadequacy of the tools currently available. The multidimensional analysis we performed on a proprietary database set up by a container terminal company confirmed the above hypotheses as far as inconsistency in knowledge and of data bases is concerned.