Factors affecting safe navigation and their impacts in port area

Abstract

Navigation system is designed to guide and control vessel systematically to avoid accident. Navigation system disorder can lead to maritime accidents such as collision, grounding and stranding which could result in significant losses in terms of damage, oil pollution, loss of life and financial losses. As a result, improvement to safety of navigation in ports is increasingly addressed by society, particularly local authorities. This study was conducted to explore the influences of potential factors to the safety of navigation and its impact in port. It has been carried out involving 100 respondents from Johor Port and Port of Tanjung Pelepas. The respondents involved are vessel captain, pilot, and towing captain. Data were collected using questionnaires and were analysed using SPSS program for Win XP. The methods of analysis used in this study are descriptive and inferential. Descriptive analysis is used to determine the safety factors and their impacts, Pearson Correlation method is used to check correlations between factors and impacts, and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is used to check dependency of means between groups of respondents. The respondents agree that main factors affecting safe navigation in port are environment, vessel and navigational aid (mean of 1.80, 2.01 and 1.86 respectively), while the failure of navigation in port will contribute to the significant impact to port operations and losses (mean of 1.85 and 2.03 respectively). There are significant correlations between factors and impacts where average r2-value is 0.569 between factors elements, 0.503 between impacts elements, and 0.745 between factors and impacts. The result also proved that the answer selection by respondents is not influenced by their working position and experience, where overall p-value is above 0.05.