ABSTRACT: The primary purpose of a marine casualty investigation is to seek to establish the causal factors of the casualty with a view to learning the hard lessons and avoiding a repetition. The broad questions of an investigation: ""who?, what?, when?, where?, why?, and how?"", all help to uncover the facts. The investigation sequence will cover a diverse range of fact-finding activities, amongst which, as often the case, may be a requirement for ?conducting specialised studies?. Following the fact-finding stage the typical investigation progresses to analysis of the facts, reaches conclusions and makes recommendations. Keeping an open mind, to avoid premature conclusions, requires the separation of the fact-finding and analysis phases. But the analysis may well help to identify missing pieces of evidence, or different lines of enquiry that may otherwise have gone undetected. As an effective reconstruction tool, a full-mission bridge simulator offers an opportunity to examine a broad spectrum of environmental conditions and vessel characteristics, as well as equipment failures, human factors and operating procedures. A casualty incident can be reconstructed in a real-time simulated environment, to aid more detailed analysis. Within the usual confines of the legal process, comprehension of nautical ?black magic? is greatly simplified for non-mariners, by seeing the simulated casualty incident unfold, in real-time or in selected short-time seg-ments.

KEYWORDS: Maritime Casualties, Casualty Analysis Tool, Marine Safety Investigation, Collision Case Study, ARPA Simulation, Simulator Reconstruction, Effectiveness of Simulator, Full Mission Bridge Simulator (FMBS)

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