Unlocking Safer Shipping: The Synergy Between SHIELD and SeaQ

Written by: Claire Georgeson and Dr Rafet Emek Kurt 

Why does PsyFyi exist?

Claire Georgeson, PsyFyi CEO & Founder

A question that we get asked a lot is why.

Why does PsyFyi exist?

Why does SeaQ ask questions every day?

Why do we report the findings in the manner we do?

As the maritime industry continues to prioritise safety, there is growing recognition that understanding the human element is critical. It’s safe to say that since COVID-19, the seafarer has been a focus, yet the industry’s ‘aligned strategy’ is focused mainly on reactive services, rather than proactive ones.

The importance of human factors in maritime safety is well established. Incident investigations frequently point to issues such as fatigue, communication breakdowns, or organisational pressures as contributing causes.

For us at PsyFyi, we find it challenging that when it is known through investigations that causes can be prevented, the industry is not working harder to find a solution for the prevention.

So, the first answer to the question of why PsyFyi exists is answered because of the above, there is a necessity and a gap in the market where proactive data can have a real impact on safety, and this is where we sit.

The second, very important question is, why does SeaQ ask questions every day? Simply put, because things change every day. Small snapshots are easier to obtain than asking 50 questions at one go. Continuous snapshots allow an individual to reflect and take stock because they are not being bombarded by information and questions.

When SeaQ was designed, we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel or ignore all the amazing research and work that were already being used. So, here’s a spoiler; we used the SHIELD framework to guide the way in which we ask our questions and report our findings.

Understanding SHIELD

Dr Rafet Emek Kurt, Director, Maritime Human Factors Centre, University of Strathclyde

At the Maritime Human Factors Centre at the University of Strathclyde, we have been asking a very similar question to PsyFyi: if we already know that many contributing factors to incidents are preventable, why are we not learning from them more effectively?

This is exactly where SHIELD comes in. SHIELD, the Safety Human Incident & Error Learning Database, is an award-winning1 human factors taxonomy developed under the EU-funded SAFEMODE project. It was created to help the industry translate incidents and near misses into meaningful safety lessons, not by assigning blame, but by understanding the system conditions that shape human performance.

At its core, SHIELD provides a structured and intuitive way to analyse events across four key layers: Acts, Preconditions, Operational Leadership, and Organisation. The “Acts” layer captures what happened, but more importantly, the deeper layers allow us to understand why it happened. These include factors such as workload, fatigue, communication, system design, leadership decisions, and organisational influences.

Image 1: SHIELD architecture, source: https://www.mdpi.com/2313-576X/9/1/14

What makes SHIELD particularly powerful is its ability to go beyond surface-level explanations. Instead of stopping at “human error”, it helps uncover the underlying conditions that made that action possible or even likely. In doing so, it supports a shift towards a more open, just and learning-focused safety culture.

Another key strength of SHIELD is its simplicity and usability. It provides a common language for human factors, allowing investigators, operators, regulators and insurers to capture data consistently and generate insights across fleets and organisations. Increasingly, industry stakeholders are recognising this value, not only for understanding past events, but for identifying trends and enabling evidence-based improvements.

Ultimately, SHIELD is not just about analysing incidents, it is about improving design. By capturing human factors data in a structured way, it enables better ship design, more effective procedures, and more resilient operations.

And this is where the synergy with SeaQ becomes particularly powerful. If SHIELD helps us understand why things have gone wrong, then SeaQ helps us understand what is happening right now. Together, they create a much stronger safety picture, combining structured learning from past events with real-time insight into the human element onboard.

SHIELD helps organisations understand why things go wrong

Claire continues...

SeaQ, by contrast, focuses on capturing real-time insights from seafarers themselves. Through daily, anonymised inputs, it gathers data on factors such as fatigue, stress, communication, and onboard culture. This allows operators to identify emerging risks early and monitor trends over time. SeaQ is therefore less about hindsight and more about foresight, providing a continuous pulse on the human element onboard.

Frameworks like the SHIELD Human Factors taxonomy provide a structured way to analyse these elements, categorising them into unsafe acts, preconditions, operational leadership, and wider organisational influences.

Which then leads me to the final question: Why do we report the findings in the manner we do?

The true value of any data set is that you can understand it when it is presented. SeaQ generates high-frequency, bottom-up data directly from crew, while SHIELD provides a robust structure to interpret that data. For example, trends in fatigue or workload identified through SeaQ can be mapped to SHIELD’s “preconditions” layer, while insights into leadership and communication align with its “operational leadership” category. In this way, raw sentiment is transformed into structured, actionable intelligence.

This integration enables a shift from reactive to proactive safety management. Rather than waiting for incidents to occur and then analysing them, organisations can detect early warning signs and understand how they may escalate into risk. It effectively creates a closed-loop system: monitoring conditions in real time, classifying them within a proven taxonomy, and informing targeted interventions before issues develop further.

What a wonderful why 😊