The Human Factor(y) in Danish shipping technology

This seminar examines what happens to the human being when it enters the vocabulary of technology-heavy industries, above all maritime shipping. Terms such as "the human factor," "the human element," "user," and "end-user" are so pervasive in safety regulation, technology development projects, and implementation discourse that they tend to pass unnoticed. In this seminar we will treat them as analytical objects in their own right.

Such vocabulary locates problems, assigns responsibilities, and forecloses certain solutions before they are even considered. When a speaker at a maritime technology conference identifies 'acceptance' as the central challenge of implementation, the framing is already in place. Technology is the given, and the human is the variable to be adjusted. The idea of the human as a stimulus-response object that can be trained, configured, and measured, and that either resists or accepts.

The seminar brings this analytical lens to bear on two concrete cases. The first is the development of an AI-powered route optimisation tool currently underway at DFDS, one of Europe's largest shipping companies — a case that illuminates how design choices, commercial interests, a just-in-time ideology and organisational asymmetries between sea and shore are rendered invisible when the question is posed as one of crew acceptance and user training. The second concerns alarm handling and the management of safety-critical information on board — a domain where the gap between regulatory expectations and situated seafaring practice is particularly sharp. Together, these cases ask: who counts as a user, who does not, and what is lost when the answer is taken for granted?

13.00-13.10 Jakob Krause-Jensen: Welcome and presentation 
13.10-13.30 Perle Møhl: The Human Factor(y) in technology development 
13.35-14.00 Nanna Thit: Doing what's right: A case of just-in-time and Ai-route optimization
14.00-14.15 Break
14.15-14.40 Comments and reflections by Asger Schliemann Haug, Lead Data Scientist, Lloyds Register, Marine Engineer, IMO delegate
14.40-14.55 General Q & A