Maritime Accident Investigation & Incident Analysis

Build evidence-led casualty investigations, causal analysis, and practical maritime safety improvements
What you'll learn

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Explain the purpose, scope, roles, and lifecycle of a maritime accident investigation.
Apply evidence-preservation, chain-of-custody, and timeline-building practices to a marine casualty.
Analyze event sequences, barriers, human performance, and organizational factors to identify causal factors.
Develop evidence-linked findings and actionable safety recommendations for maritime incident reports.
Requirements

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No prior experience required.
Basic familiarity with vessel operations or maritime safety is helpful but not essential.
A willingness to review incident scenarios, records, and structured evidence examples.
Description

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Maritime Accident Investigation and Incident Analysis provides a practical, safety-focused framework for examining marine casualties, operational incidents, near misses, and unsafe occurrences. Learn how a disciplined investigation turns a complex event into credible evidence, a clear account of what happened, and improvements that can reduce the likelihood of recurrence.
You will explore the full investigation lifecycle: defining scope and responsibilities, preserving a scene, collecting physical and digital evidence, managing records, and building a reliable timeline. The course explains witness interviewing, evidence integrity, time normalization, and the careful distinction between facts, inferences, causal factors, and contributing conditions. You will also use structured approaches such as event and causal factor charting, barrier analysis, five whys, change analysis, and hypothesis testing.
Progress from initial notification and field investigation to the analysis of collisions, groundings, fires, machinery failures, cargo events, pollution occurrences, and occupational incidents. Practical lessons show how to assess navigation, engineering, emergency response, human performance, safety management, and shore-side influences while recognizing when specialist technical input is needed. The emphasis is on learning and prevention, not blame.
Plan a proportionate maritime casualty investigation.
Preserve and evaluate documentary, physical, and electronic evidence.
Reconstruct events and analyze control failures.
Write evidence-linked findings and actionable safety recommendations.
By the end, you will be able to contribute to a defensible incident analysis process, communicate uncertainty responsibly, and support meaningful corrective actions within vessel operations, maritime organizations, or safety-management systems.
Who this course is for

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Ship officers, engineers, and maritime personnel involved in incident reporting or onboard safety.
HSE, safety-management, and shore-based operations staff in shipping, ports, and offshore operations.
Marine surveyors, claims support staff, and aspiring investigators seeking a structured safety-investigation foundation.
Maritime students and professionals who want to strengthen casualty analysis and reporting skills.
Homepage

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