Enhancing System Safety Through System Dynamics: A Case Study on Ship Remote Pilotage

Safety has always been a matter of concern, and nowadays, with the emergence of AI-based technologies, it is more imperative than ever to have efficient system safety modeling techniques trained with precursor accident analysis. Traditional, and well-known system safety and accident scenarios modeling techniques are not capable anymore of capturing nonlinear interactions among cutting-edge systems mainly due to increased complexity. System engineering and systemic approaches (e.g., FRAM, AcciMap, STPA) have attracted large attention due to their capability to cover this existing and growing gap. Accordingly, a System Dynamics (SD) model is discussed in this chapter as a system safety and accident model technique and then employed for a recently demonstrated intelligent remote pilotage system defined and developed in Finland. The SD simulation software is utilized to present the system safety performance, through a time of five years. Despite limitations, such as the restricted capabilities in casual factor identification and requirement for a thorough comprehension of the operation and system safety, the results prove the applicability of SD for intelligent operations. Utilizing casual loop diagram and stock and flow diagram, SD can cover both qualitative and quantitative aspects of system safety and accident modeling.