A New Approach to Accident Analysis: Multiple Agent Perception-Action

The economic and social impact of maritime accidents are enormous and devastating. In recent times the world experienced some grievous accidents which put serious challenges to the existing methods of safety evaluation. Over the years many research has been conducted on risk analysis and improvement of safety standards. Yet accidents are taking place and human elements are the major contributing factors. This paper proposes a new technique based on logic programming (e.g. Prolog) method. It is considered that an accident is an unwanted event which initiates from hidden causes (e.g. various action(s)/perception(s) of ship crew). It is, therefore, discussed that using intelligent agents for evaluation of the actions/perceptions of ship crew may result in uncovering of the hidden root causes behind an accident. Intelligent agents are essentially computer programs which acts or behaves rationally according their percepts. The perception and action sequence of an intelligent agent depends on the given environment and knowledge base. Study reveals that such a technique may assist ship crew in evaluating their decisions for making a safe voyage. The merits and demerits of the method are discussed briefly and future recommendations are made.