IRS 2020 OCEAN

The initial motivation for the OCEAN project stemmed from the observation that a significant number of oil tanker accidents occur repeatedly each year, causing substantial human, economic, and environmental damage. We quickly realized that maritime accidents involved all types of vessels, all of which shared “the human factor”—identified in the literature as a major cause of these accidents. This was the case, for example, with the grounding of the bulk carrier MV Wakashio in late July 2020 off the coast of Mauritius, which resulted in several deaths and an oil spill into one of the island’s protected lagoons.

A CERAG team consisting of three faculty members (Isabelle Corbett-Etchevers, Carine Dominguez-Péry, and Jérémy Eydieux), two doctoral students (Marcio Lassance and Lakshmi Narasimha Raju Vuddaraju), and a student in the ARAMIS Master’s in Information Systems program at Grenoble IAE School of Management (Vikhram Kofi Duffour) was formed to address the following question: How could management and organizational sciences contribute to a better understanding of the human factor and thereby help reduce the risk of maritime accidents? While the literature indicates that 85% of accident causes are human-related, ships remain, surprisingly, organizations largely overlooked by management sciences—whether from an empirical, theoretical, or methodological perspective. Yet they are economically pivotal organizations, as highlighted by the recent blockage of the Suez Canal by the container ship Ever Given: maritime transport accounts for more than 90% of global trade flows! Ships are, in fact, unique organizations that bring together international crews, characterized by high turnover and a variety of roles (navigators, engineers, cooks, etc.). Sailors live in “confinement” day and night during voyages that can last up to a year without returning to shore, which requires adapting management practices to address the inevitable stresses faced by these crews—who are asked to perform demanding work while management variables are increasingly optimized. A final characteristic of these ships is their increasing automation through information and communication technologies to handle an ever-growing number of navigation-related tasks: much like autonomous vehicles, the number of crew members on board is trending downward in favor of various navigation and communication technologies, which poses new operational challenges in reorganizing work on board as well as in communicating efficiently with all stakeholders interacting with the ship from shore. To study these issues, we have expanded our team to include Valérie Lépine, a professor and researcher (HDR) at LERASS, a laboratory specializing in information and communication sciences.

This team was awarded an IRS OCEAN project in late 2019 with a budget of 13 KE. It brought together expertise from CERAG in organizational innovation (the “Innovation and Organizational Complexity” research area) and risk management (the “Risk Anticipation and Management” research area) with expertise in communication sciences from GRESEC within the Social Sciences Division (PSS).
 
The study involved conducting semi-structured interviews with captains, sailors, and maritime professionals specializing in information systems. The team also conducted literature reviews to better understand the role of information technology in human-machine interaction issues during navigation phases (Dominguez-Péry and Vuddaraju, 2020), the role of human factors in the causes of accidents (Dominguez-Péry et al., 2021a), and the nature of the risk models employed by researchers to prevent these accidents (Dominguez-Péry et al., 2021b). Finally, the analysis of tweets collected during the grounding of the MV Wakashio made it possible to propose theoretical frameworks related to synchronicity and media richness, as well as a tool to better communicate with all stakeholders in order to minimize the risk of maritime accidents (Dominguez-Péry et al., 2021c).
 
The IRS OCEAN project served as a starting point for developing new knowledge in a field that is atypical for the humanities and social sciences. Our team had to adapt to the COVID-19 crisis, which significantly impacted shipowners and, more broadly, all maritime professionals, at times limiting our ability to access field sites. The team also underwent some restructuring following the departure of Valérie Lépine, who was appointed professor at Paul Valéry University of Montpellier 3. Building on the IRS project, exchanges with the CDP Risk at UGA provided an opportunity to initiate interdisciplinary work in mathematics with Franck Corset, a faculty member and researcher at the LJK. Together with a team from the LJK, we have thus begun studying Bayesian networks that incorporate the results of the IRS OCEAN project. A national network of researchers interested in this topic, as well as partners in England (Rana Tassabehji) and Brazil, is currently being established to continue this work focused on ships—which are fascinating concentrations of human activity to study!
 
Publications resulting from the IRS OCEAN project:


Dominguez-Péry C., Vuddaraju L.N.R. (2020), “From Human Automation Interactions to Social Human Autonomy Machine Teaming in maritime transportation.” In: IFIP WG8.6 Conference 2020, Tiruchirappalli, India, December.
 
Dominguez-Péry C., Vuddaraju L.N.R., Corbett-Etchevers I., Tassabehji R. (2021a), “Reducing tanker accidents by tackling human error: a systematic literature review and future research agenda,” The World of Shipping Conference, Portugal, January.
 
Dominguez-Péry C., Vuddaraju L.N.R., Duffour V., Eydieux J., Tassabehji R. (2021b), “Risks and safety in maritime transportation: a review and agenda for research,” The World of Shipping Conference, Portugal, January.

Dominguez-Péry C., Tassabehji R., Vuddaraju L.N.R., Duffour V. (2021c), “Improving Emergency Response Operations in Maritime Accidents using Social Media with Big Data Analytics: the MV Wakashio disaster case study,” International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 41, No. 9, pp. 1544–1567. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOPM-12-2020-0900