# The Impact of the Human Factor on Communication During a Collision Situation in Maritime Navigation
## 1 Introduction
### Analysis of Marine Accidents  
The analysis of maritime accidents was carried out using official reports from maritime accident investigation bodies and Maritime Statistical Yearbooks for the years 2019-2022 [6]. Statistics collected between 2019 and 2022 [7], including marine accidents broken down by the type and causes of marine accidents and incidents, show that there has been a noticeable improvement in the level of safety in shipping, and accident statistics are on a downward trend. However, humans still remain the main factor that causes most accidents. The specific causes of maritime accidents are listed in Table 1.  
To summarize the statistics in Table 1, percentages representing the human factor in the listed causes of marine accidents and incidents are presented below. Human errors accounted for the following:  
* A total of 38.3% of all causes in 2019;
* A total of 46% of all causes in 2020;
* A total of 71.4% of all causes in 2021;
* A total of 64% of all causes in 2022. According to the latest data from Allianz, 38 large vessels were completely lost in 2022, a drop from 59 in 2021. The 2023 Safety and Shipping Review shows that maritime safety has improved over the past 10 years, but the human factor--as a cause of accidents--still ranks the highest. The region including southern China, Indochina, Indonesia, and the Philippines had the highest number of shipping losses in 2022--a total of 10--ranking first in terms of transport losses over the past decade [8]. The latest edition of the Annual Overview of Marine Casualties and Incidents [9] states that in 2022, 2510 marine accidents and incidents were reported, a figure smaller by 182 compared to 2021 and by 84 compared to 2020. After the traffic was reduced in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it increased in 2021 alongside resumed cruise ship and ferry operations and reached pre-pandemic levels in 2022 (Table 2). However, the number of casualties and incidents reported that year was 5.1% below the annual average and below the average of 2670 events before the pandemic. Aiming to contribute to the improvement of maritime safety, the authors continued their research on this topic. The above statistics indicate that human errors still account for significant percentage as a cause of maritime accidents. In previous publications [10], the authors proposed a model for the transformation of natural language into ontology and in the inverse direction in a maritime navigation system for autonomous vessels. The system implemented all aspects of communication tasks of voyages at sea. Methods of \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Causes of Accidents** & **2019** & **2020** & **2021** & **2022** \\ \hline Error in navigation or maneuvering & 24 & 10 & 4 & 16 \\ Loss of control & 0 & 2 & 0 & 0 \\ Damage to equipment & 20 & 14 & 8 & 8 \\ Slipping, loss of balance, unfortunate fall, hitting & 1 & 4 & 0 & 0 \\ Bad weather conditions & 2 & 3 & 3 & 0 \\ Hull leakage & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ Mechanical defect & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ Lack of caution at work & 4 & 11 & 41 & 28 \\ Immobilization by fishing nets & 0 & 0 & 0 & 8 \\ Other & 22 & 6 & 7 & 8 \\ Total & 73 & 50 & 63 & 68 \\ Total of Human Errors & 28 & 23 & 45 & 44 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} Source: authors’ study based on “Data by the State Commission on Maritime Accident Investigation”.  
\end{table} 
Table 1: Causes of accidents. machine learning originating from the area of text mining and the basic and additional properties of ontologies were applied. The authors designed a new ontology formula specifically dedicated to maritime transport applications. The prototype main elements were the sequence of communication messages and the rule base. The described model was created and tested on chosen collision situation scenarios at sea. The correctness of the assumptions of the research was confirmed by the results obtained from the architecture of the designed system and the developed algorithms in the software prototype.