Critical incidents during dynamic positioning: operators' situation awareness and decision-making in maritime operations

The maritime industry is increasingly becoming dependent on dynamic positioning (DP) systems for automated vessel station keeping. This study aimed to reveal characteristics of DP operators' situation awareness (SA) and decision-making during critical incidents. Information from a total of 24 critical incidents was collected from 13 experienced DP using the critical decision method. The results indicate that in 10 incidents, the DP operators were unable to identify the base events (e.g. did not form level 1 SA) but were able to identify the problem (e.g. understand the situation; e.g. form level 2 SA). These findings indicate that the establishment of high-level SA may happen even without low-level SA. This study contributes to an improved understanding of the development of SA and the recovery of critical incidents during complex maritime operations.