Research project shipping up maritime safety

The safety culture of Australian shipping operations will be examined in a collaborative research project between The University of Western Australia, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) and the University of Queensland.

The findings from the three-year project - funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) - will be used to improve safety policies, regulations and practices that aim to reduce the number of accidents and incidents in Australian waters.

The UWA collaborator in the project is ARC Future Fellow, Winthrop Professor Mark Griffin, an expert in workplace safety, stress and wellbeing from UWA’s School of Psychology.

The project is expected to make a significant contribution to improving maritime safety in general by providing a better understanding of issues surrounding safety culture.

Until now, most research into transport safety culture has been in aviation, compared with only a handful of studies of maritime safety culture done internationally.

Further research is needed to investigate the influence of safety culture on behaviour in order to develop effective and evidence-based recommendations for training programs, work design, procedures, policies and regulations.