Interlaken, Switzerland, on 9 September 2013
For the second week in a row, ALL Academy had the pleasure of delivering the opening speech at an important maritime conference. This time it was the European Marine Accident Investigators International Forum (EMAIIF) that had gathered for their EMAIIF 9 conference in beautiful Interlaken, Switzerland. Also this time, Maritime Resource Management (MRM) was the primary topic of our presentation.
“Accident investigations are of no use if they are not used, and they are not used if the quality and standards of the reports are not good enough.” These are obvious truths discussed at the conference but the maritime industry still has some work to do in this respect. There are flag States who take their responsibility seriously but there are also those who act slowly, fail to adequately address the human and organizational factors involved and there are also those who do not publish their reports when completed. Then all the learning opportunities get lost.
Flag States around the world should use the best ones as their benchmark and shipping companies and training providers should also show their appreciation and make better use of the reports when flag States have managed to produce useful reports. It is not an easy task to dig down to the root causes and provide a reasonably clear picture of all the factors contributing to the accident.
Despite being a European conference, there were representatives also from a number of flag States outside Europe. The following flag States were participating at the conference: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Canada, China, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom and USA.
The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) and the Marine Accident Investigators’ International Forum (MAIIF) also had representatives attending the conference.
The EMAIIF 9 conference took place on 8-10 September 2013 and was organised by the Swiss Maritime Navigation Office (SMNO).
Participants at EMAIIF 9 held on 8-10 September 2013