A port safety organisation is urging the UK’s port and terminal operators to keep better records on incidents and near misses.
Port Skills and Safety (PSS) has just completed a pilot data project exploring how AI can help determine the root cause of incidents but found that the quality of data collected in ports hampers the in-depth analysis needed.
“PSS has been promoting the recording of incident and near miss data for many years,” explained PSS chief executive, Debbie Cavaldoro.
“But without the context of how that data can be used, it is difficult to fully understand what data should be recorded.”
Working with PSS member Comet, data, including first responder’s reports, investigations, and safety observations, was collected from five ports, and examined to understand where common root causes occurred.
Just over 33,000 records were uploaded as part of the pilot project – nearly 10,000 incident reports, 1,000 near miss reports and the remaining records were classified as observations.
One of the main findings of the pilot was that, in far too many cases, reports of incidents are very brief and only provide a limited amount of useful data.
“If more detailed records are kept, including basic notes taken at the time of the incident, then ability of AI to identify root causes for near misses and observations, will allow the port sector to learn lessons much more effectively and address the root causes most likely to be the cause of incidents in the future,” concluded Cavaldoro.
