Shipboard Bridge Resource Management

Jacket copy from
Shipboard Bridge Resource Management
by Michael R. Adams

“Even though advanced technology has given seamen better tools for navigation, communication, and general safety, ships continue to collide, ground, and sink resulting in lives lost, millions of dollars in damage, and tremendous environmental harm. In most cases, these losses are caused by human factors. Studies vary, but human factors are found to be a significant contributing cause, if not the cause, in 75 to 90 percent of ship catastrophes. In other words, bad things happen to ships because the sailors aboard them fail to work effectively with their equipment and with each other. It does not matter if the ship is military or civilian; manned by a crew of two or two hundred; all of a single nationality or an ethnic mix. When the people fail, the ships fail.

“Our goal here is to learn why these failures occur and thereby to stop them before they happen. This study of all the human factors aboard ship (that is, the manner in which people work together with their equipment, available information, and each other) is known as bridge resource management (BRM).”

This new, peer-reviewed textbook describes all BRM principles recognized by the U.S. Coast Guard and the International Maritime Organization. Through his command and teaching experience and the use of case studies, Michael R. Adams explains the integration of traditional seamanship and modern ship navigational resources and demonstrates the practice and practical utility of BRM.