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and instead referred to as customer involvement:
“you could say that our end-users are the
manufacturers and the shipping companies” (I1).
Customers do not understand the practice as a user.
As agreed by an informant. “I would say it should be
the end-users, as the customers are constructed by a
financial relation” (I9).
The second misconception is, that when users are
involved, it is often only specific ones: “[...] there were
the darling captains who always were brought in on
the projects [...]” (I5). This leaves few candidates and
limits the available practitioner knowledge to one or a
few positions. Various positions and individuals can
have greatly different tasks on a vessel.
The third misconception is that users could also
refer to former users. This introduces the risk of
patenting knowledge from when leaving life at sea. “I
have observed, there are many [ex-seafarers] know-it-
alls with the solution for all the world’s problems”
(I2). This is problematic because there is a risk that
extracted knowledge is not grounded in
contemporary seafaring practices: “[...] the end-users
are often represented by former seafarers [...]” (I9).
This has caused “[...] many half-hearted solutions
from a former navigator or marine engineer with old
knowledge” (I2). The industry keeps on evolving, so it
can be a big problem if former seafarers are used to
reflect current life at sea.
The fourth misconception reflects that user
perspectives are represented by maritime academies.
The maritime academies have also been pointed to as
a source of contemporary knowledge: “we depend on
the maritime academies, SIMAC [a maritime school in
the Danish city of Svendborg] e.g., and their facilities
[...]” (I1). While training facilities, teachers, etc., can
provide valuable knowledge, they cannot replace real-
life scenarios, experience, and expertise.
The fifth misconception is that industry and user
perspectives are aligned. The industry and the agenda
of the funds were identified as an outcome-altering
factor: “we are driven by the industry’s interest as
they are our core stakeholders [...]” (I1). If project
facilitators cannot secure their interest and funds,
there will be no technology development for
sustainable transition.
It must be understood who the users are. It is the
active seafarers. The above illustrates the first barrier
to real end-user involvement as important actors can
be under the illusion that end-user involvement takes
place. A user’s input is needed in Blue Denmark, as an
informant states: “some of the projects we have are
very technical and very engineer savvy, but there are
no marine engineers connected [...]” (I1). It is
indisputable that domain-specific knowledge can help
verify potential in development. But it must stay
diverse and current; “it is important to be observant of
the diversity of knowledge [...] also within maritime
knowledge, that you are aware that there is a seafarer
from China and India who also are end-users of the
product” (I2).
4.2 Barrier Two - Technology
The second barrier is the false idea of what technology
should be developed for and why. Arguably there is
more than one truth, but for the sake of the green
transition we can look to a dictionary definition of the
word technology, “the use of tools and machines to
help people conduct tasks more efficiently and with
less effort” (32). I.e., technology can reduce emissions
from shipping, as a project facilitator mentions:
“moving people and goods creates a lot of value for
the world. However, there is also a dark side, in this
case, a negative impact on the environment, we work
to bring that down” (I9). We have to remember that
technology should be developed, invested in, and
committed to, so we can ensure our future on this
planet. The disconnect between land and sea along
with the construction of the world of shipping often
results in sub-optimal conditions for change when
deploying new technology. Therefore, it is important
to see how the perceived purpose of developing new
technology changes throughout the system. The
system has shown two main categories of false beliefs:
removing humans and technological glorification.
4.2.1 Removing Humans
The first false belief is that technology should
replace humans. Aside from the expense, that crew
needs to be paid and therefore will result in fewer
expenses, it will allegedly also result in fewer errors,
i.e., it equals fewer disasters, higher efficiency, and
more revenue (20). However, removing human
operators from ships is implausible for three reasons.
First, technology is not capable e.g., the unmanned
autonomous vessel is not able to deal with the
dynamics of the seas or to possess the level of
adaptability of humans while being built on the
collision regulations that are dependent on human
intervention. And, if technology was able, it would
have happened already as the business case would be
too lucrative for any shipping company to pass, as an
informant argues: “if the technology were a product,
you could just go and buy off the shelf, then it would
already be implemented” (I14).
Secondly, the false belief that seafarers solely exist
on the vessel to steer the vessel. The auto-pilot
technology has existed for years, the ship is steering
itself. Most of the work that happens on a ship is
maintenance (33). Along with other workloads,
maintenance is not something an autonomous vessel
is exempt from, even though Danish Shipping
anticipates robots will be able to overtake this task
(34). The workload from digital systems is still
increasing (35). An informant said: “companies, at the
moment, have more crew than legislation requires,
because there is too much maintenance work” (I10).
Thirdly, the argument that computers are safer,
and the concept of human error. The main argument
is that roughly 85% of accidents can be attributed to
human error (36). The problem is that human error
does not classify as an error isolated to a human
making a mistake, but rather because of multiple
factors failing. As noted by Rothblum: “human errors
are generally caused by technologies, environments,
and organizations which are incompatible in some
way with optimal human performance” (37). It is also