Maritime Engine Room Resource Management Extended to Remote Members Onshore: Conceptual Model using Internet of Everything (IoE)
Authors: Inoue Moritaro , Uchihira Naoshi 
Published: June 2022

Operation and management of ships is a typical service system including human factors. In recent years, the maritime industry has become increasingly concerned about human factors against maritime accidents, which have still remained high rate. The International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers, 1978/2010 (STCW convention) made that maritime resource management (MRM) is a requirement for seafarers' qualifications, including BRM (Bridge Resource Management) for the navigation department and ERM (Engine Room Resource Management) for the engine department. This paper focuses on ERM, which is a method to operate a ship safely by appropriately managing and effectively utilizing resources in the ship engine area. The STCW code lists the following requirements for ERM: (1) allocation, assignment and prioritization of resources (2) effective communication (3) assertiveness and leadership (4) obtaining and maintaining situational awareness (5) consideration of team experience.MRM has been developed based on Crew Resource Management (CRM), which has been developed in the aviation industry and has been one of the important issues in human factors research, by fitting the characteristics and target tasks of ships. At present, MRM capability is being developed through training-based methods. However, MRM does not depend solely on the abilities and skills of individuals, but can be demonstrated by organizations. In addition, as the equipment on ships becomes more complicated in response to environmental regulations and efficient operation, it is becoming more difficult for the personnel in the engine department to manage and control all the resources alone. In the future, it will be necessary to provide remote support from the members onshore, to make data visible efficiently by utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT), and to develop mechanisms and systems to support ERM in the actual field.In this paper, we propose a conceptual model of support system for ERM using human awareness and IoT sensors, and an ERM concept that extends to remote members onshore including engineering supervisors and maintenance personnel in shipbuilding companies. The proposed model uses not only an IoT system to collect sensor data from the main engine, generator, and other equipment on board the ship, but also the smart voice messaging system that allows the crew to share and store their operations and observations (human awareness). This model is classified as Internet of Everything (IoE) since it consists of IoT and human awareness. The smart voice messaging system had been developed for collaboration management in various services including maintenance by authors (Uchihira et al., Collaboration management by smart voice messaging for physical and adaptive intelligent services, PICMET 2013). The proposed ERM support system based on IoE is still conceptual model. We evaluated effectiveness of the proposed system by interviewing several ship managers. As a result, it was found that the system has the potential to support the resource management of equipment and personnel, which is the objective of MRM. Unique points of the proposed model include (1) ERM model extended to remote members onshore and (2) ERM support system utilizing both IoT sensor data and human awareness together.