HELP NEEDED FOR MSc RESEARCH

[MSc]

My project of study is to ascertain the use of electronic navigation displays in maritime Search and Rescue(SAR). I am specifically looking at whether by the adoption of this fantastic new technology we have had more accidents or incidents down to it's use/mis-use/failure or limitation. I am looking at the leisure market and the professional mariner in this study. On the flip side I am looking at how SAR Units(both lifeboats and helicopters) use such displays. Do they find them easy to use, greatly assist the search or just another tool to use. I am also asking what information they would like the 'ideal' system to display.
I am also looking for incidents where navigation displays played a good or bad role in the situation and lessons that were learned. A few incidents have arisen such as navigating at 21 kts down a river and hitting a sandbank clearly marked with 6 buoys. An explanation to the CG was 'I was following my waypoints'. I am not trying to ridicule or belittle anyone but am looking for lessons so that others can learn from them. On the flipside the Board of Inquiry into HMS NOTTINGHAM hitting Wolf rock of Lord Howe Island specified that this incident probably would not have happened had electronic charting been in use. Any input will be anonymous and I will be sharing the findings of my project with the RNLI to aid in the saving lives at sea.
My own background was in the Royal Navy spending 13 years as an bridge watchkeeping officer and I have been with the RNLI for the last 4 years as an inspector/manager here in Scotland.

[MSc]

I'll be closing the survey on Wed so if you want to participate please do so before then. Thank you all for your participation and contributions. If I'm successful I'll post a link to the paper.

[Kettlewell]

Where is the survey?

My primary sailing grounds are the East Coast of North America to the Caribbean, so I'm not sure my views will be useful to you. I do hear and see frequent instances of boaters overly dependent on their electronic navigation devices to the point that they are at a loss when the power fails or something else goes wrong. One morning while anchored along our Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) it was a bit foggy so I had another cup of coffee, but soon a nervous voice came over the VHF radio calling for assistance as he was underway in the fog, his GPS chartplotter was indicating he was traveling over land, and how could he figure out where he really was? I was able to ask him various questions, and being quite familiar with the ICW, and having paper charts in front of me, I soon determined where he was likely to be and I proceeded to give him some directions as to where to go. This is a particularly sad example because the ICW is marked with numerous daymarks and buoys, frequently as close as 100 yards or less to one another, but in any case someone with the most basic sense of navigation and a paper chart can simply follow the markers for more than 1000 miles. Add a depthsounder to help you stay in the channel and a basic VHF radio to call bridges and such, and that's really all you need to be safe.

[Roy M]

Could this be of any help?: http://www.panbo.com/assets_c/2012/0...anbo-6101.html

The latest iteration of multifunction display (mfd) tools for search and rescue includes automatic information systems (AIS) that displays necessary icons and data to potential rescuers and victims alike.

[HappySeagull]

You could do this study on "The introduction of Radar and Loran aboard fishing vessels" and come up with results very pertinent to nowadays.

...you would be interested in this: google search "Queen of the North inquiry"
of course the Costa Concordia you've seen plenty!

some of the salient features of the QofN I find remarkable myself are: turning off the (overbright ?) screen display, and the comments on the quality of the hardware/software.

What I see locally: before cheap gps,radar and plotting, folk avoided the tricky bits without patiently aquired local knowledge...especially at night. But on the other hand, it's been a while since I met some hapless soul totally lost in the fog....
Many of the comments you get here are folks that have experience previous to gps and plotters and many of these say they are glad to know the old ways. I think it's because they keep an instinctive sense of DR that mediates their trust in the electronics. so, if you add a strong dollop of caution and experience to the electronic navigation for small craft , it is safer than it was. T'was always the way!
A new beginner now faces a panoply of doofunnies and the maintenance of them. Do they need also know the so-called basics as well? Is the learning load greater? I think not. It's just different. Maintaining a vessel with a full-sized chart table and a full-sized crew was always beyond the reach of most mere boaters and small-craft, short-handed navigation was always compromised to some degree.


I wonder if Aircraft Pilots haven't already been through this?

[barnakiel]

The way you spell things may make it very hard to answer. Perhaps you can list the specific questions in a numbered list?

b.

[MSc]

Guys thank you very much for the replies. Happy Seagull, your points are very valid and I agree with them the learning load is very different. I remember my first few watches on the bridge of a warship after we converted to ECDIS. It was a tad boring having be used to 3, 6, 12 minutes fixing or variation on the theme but instead of DR/EP I had the end of an arrow indicating where I was going to be in 6 min. Not a guesstimate made worse by the thickness of a 2B pencil but where I was to be having taken into account my co/sp wind and tidal effects, that's impressive. Being able to achieve the same on a yacht with a chart would be nigh on impossible, interestingly the organisation I work for the RNLI use an archaic system called laserplot backed up by paper. The chart table on our lifeboats where we plan SAR on the water is not generous. The survey is at surveymonkeydotcom/s/ENS_public