Marine accidents can occur at any time and everywhere in the world, resulting in loss of life, property, environment and reputation of the companies involved. Preventing accidents and establishing a safer world without accidents is an important agenda for the maritime industry. Since the enforcement of the International Safety Management Code in 1998, companies have taken various kinds of measures to prevent accidents. Unfortunately, measures have been undertaken in a disorganized manner, and have not been effective. Experts of risk management, the safety management system, and accident models have each undertaken accident preventive measures within the scope of their specific fields, but have not looked beyond the realm of their own fields.
This book discusses systematic accident prevention by integrating multi-disciplinary expertise based on academic research, the quality management system which has already proved its effectiveness in other fields, and findings of the author's research. In systematic accident prevention, the weaknesses of a system within which accidents and incidents have occurred are viewed by combining scientific accident investigation data based on the International Maritime Organization model and the accident model. The nature of every type of marine accident, such as collisions, groundings, occupational casualties, etc., are derived by combining the accident model and statistical data. System weaknesses are rectified by the risk reduction method of risk management, and the rectified performance is incorporated in improvement in the system by the PDCA cycle, which is the core of the Safety Management System. We can see the weakness in the system and reduce the number of accidents and incidents while utilizing limited resources optimally to prevent accidents and incidents.
About the Author: Dr. Koji Fukuoka has engaged in safety, security and risk management for about 33 years. He graduatedg from Kagoshima University with a Bachelor of Science of Fisheries in 1981. Since then, he has accomplished the core of safety management system as creation of business continuity plans (BCP), education and training of emergency situations, search and rescue operations during accidents, accident investigations, creation of accident preventive measures through his tenures of Japan Coast Guard, Japan Transport Safety Board (JTSB), International Registries Far East Ltd, Mandarin Oriental Tokyo and the other maritime companies.
During the tenure of the JTSB (from 2009 to 2016), Dr. Fukuoka produced many marine accident reports, including very serious marine accidents, as an investigator-in-charge, studied Fundamentals of accident investigation at the Cranfield University, the United Kingdom, in 2011, designated as an analyst of Correspondence group in Sub-Committee on Implementation of IMO Instruments, trained government administrators of the Philippines on national training course on Marine Casualty and Incident Investigation as the IMO consultant in 2014.
Furthermore, he studied risk management, human factors, safety and quality management system, accident investigation and analysis, ISO, multivariate analysis, accident models and so forth to reduce the number of marine accidents at the Graduate School of Maritime Sciences, Kobe University, and received a Ph.D. in Maritime Science and Technology in 2016.
He has produced the e-learning materials on Fundamentals on accident investigation and Systematic approach on accident prevention in cooperation with the International Maritime Safety Security Environment Academy (IMSSEA in Genova, Italy) in 2017 and is designated as a lecturer from IMSSEA, and a research fellowship from the Ohara Memorial Institute for Science of Labour (Tokyo, Japan).
As an accident investigator at Japan Transport Safety Board, Dr. Koji Fukuoka has conducted numerous accident investigations and analyses. He was an IMO consultant for the IMO Model Course: Safety Investigation into Marine Casualties and Marine Incidents. He has worked on accident occurrence mechanism and prevention and developed new accident models, and published several articles on accident prevention. Dr. Koji Fukuoka has a doctorate from the Graduate School of Kobe University. He is currently the Manager of the Occupational Health and Safety Section and a Crisis Management Specialist at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University in Okinawa, Japan.
