Digital Technologies Can Modify the Decision-Making Process on Ship Bridges

Digital technologies have experienced fast growth over the last year, with unexpected impacts on everyday life. The maritime sector is also positively affected by the introduction of new systems and technologies, especially in ship handling. The main reason behind adopting these technologies is to reduce human error, which could lead to serious accidents with massive repercussions on the safety of life at sea and the marine environment. Evaluating the impact on the bridge team's behaviour and the performance of the manoeuvre is a challenge and will help the future development of more advanced navigation systems. This paper aims to test a decision support system that relies on a path-planning module suitable for collision avoidance using a bridge simulator. A test scenario has been set up to reproduce a familiar coastal navigation scenario where several ships navigate in a narrow area. The goal of the test is to avoid collisions by respecting the COLREG on a foggy day, ensuring the safety distance and returning on track. Experienced masters and inexperienced people have been involved in the testing procedure. All the primary navigation information has been recorded and analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively, adopting dedicated metrics. The results prove that testing in a simulation environment can provide a valid test case and show that inexperienced personnel can also perform a safe escape route in compliance with international regulations.