# Analyzing Port State Control Data to Explore Future Improvements to GMDSS Training
## 1 Introduction  
The importance of maritime safety and sustainability is growing [1; 2; 3; 4] in the global context of increasing maritime traffic and the expansion of the global fleet [4]. Despite fleet growth, shipping losses have declined significantly in recent years, demonstrating the positive impact of safety programs, training, and changes in shipping regulations [5]. However, maritime accidents continue to cause human, environmental, and material losses, all of which have political and economic costs whose consequences are difficult to assess a priori [6]. Basically, these arguments are enough to justify investigating the risk level based on the deficiencies of the PSC inspection [7; 8] or on the factors that affect accidents [9; 10; 11; 12]. The most notable factor in research on the risk of maritime accidents is undoubtedly the human factor [9; 13], which, according to some authors, is the cause of 80% of accidents [14]. Next, it is the particularities of the vessel, such as age, size, and flag, that concern maritime risk management professionals [15; 16; 17]. Therefore, it seems straightforward to deduce that the identification of risks and their modeling have a significant impact on accident prevention. The responsibility for compliance with the rules, according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in its Art.91.1, lies primarilywith the flag State, and therefore, according to Art.94, it is this State that must take the necessary measures to ensure safety at sea [18; 19]. The weak supervision by some flag States often provides an incentive for companies to register their ships in those countries with the clear objective of saving costs, e.g., in crew training requirements. There is an increase in the number of open registries, and as a consequence, there is greater difficulty in complying with international regulations [20]. To address this difficulty, States can delegate the inspections to Classification Societies that will comply with the requirements established by Maritime Administrations, according to SOLAS Regulation 6--Inspection and Survey. Nevertheless, these controls carried out by both the State and the Classification Society do not succeed in reducing the number of substandard ships. All of this has generated a sustained concern over time on the part of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to continue working for maritime safety [21]. It is well known that the IMO's concern for maritime safety is reflected in the creation of international Conventions such as SOLAS (Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea), STCW (Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers), MARPOL (Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships), etc., which are frequently modified to assimilate changes in the maritime sector [22]. Despite this, accident prevention is complicated as a consequence of the inherent complexity of the maritime environment [23; 24; 25]. Another preventive measure adopted by the IMO about maritime safety is Port State Control (PSC), which implies the ability of the PSCO (PSC Officer) to inspect areas and departments on board ships to verify that the ship complies with the requirements of the International Conventions. At the EU level, Directive 2009/16/EC (now in revision) was implemented with the purpose \"to help to drastically reduce substandard shipping in the waters under the jurisdiction of Member States\" [26]. The purpose of the inspections is to check, among other things, certificates, documentation, and the conditions of the vessel, equipment, and crew. The data generated worldwide by the nine regional PCS agreements has been the basis for numerous interesting approaches, to name a few of the most recent [27; 28; 29]. One of the areas on board ships that is part of the set \"maritime safety\" is the communications department.