Seahorse consortium project wins prestigious maritime safety award

Posted on: 17 May 2017

Seahorse, a consortium of universities and businesses of which Trinity is a member, has won the prestigious Maritime Safety Award for 2016 presented by The Royal Institution of Naval Architects (RINA),  in association with Lloyd’s Register.

The award was presented at RINA’s annual dinner on the 27th April.

The Maritime Safety Award, is presented to the individual or organisation that has made a significant contribution to improving maritime safety or the protection of the maritime environment.

The Seahorse project was an EU funded maritime safety project which focused on human factors and resilience. The project was completed in 2016 and focused on transferring best safety practice used in the aviation transport sector to the maritime transport sector.

Research Fellow in the Centre for Innovative Human Systems Dr Paul Liston was the principle investigator for Trinity. He led the development of a systemic and systematic methodology for transferring innovation across safety-critical sectors.

Dr Liston said, "This award for our contribution to maritime safety comes at an opportune time. The maritime sector is poised to experience a surge in growth in coming years and this brings with it an increased awareness of the need to improve safety. The methodology we developed in Seahorse allows practitioners to systemically and systematically transfer resilience resources and safety innovation from one sector to another – focusing on the successful implementation of these transfer projects. The award from RINA recognises the impact of this methodology in the maritime sector and helps build momentum for applying it to other sectors." 

The methodologies and tools that Seahorse developed are freely available to shipping companies and maritime education establishments. They are currently being implemented and utilised by a number of shipping companies in order to improve the resilience of the maritime sector.