towards a digital repository

TOWARDS A DIGITAL REPOSITORY OF SHIP-OPERATIONS:

The Capture & Management of

A Maritime Knowledge-base for Safety & Education

Kalyan Chatterjea1, Rose Alinda2, Pradeep Chandrasen Nadkar3

1 Head, Research & Consultancy, Malaysian Maritime Academy, Malacca, Malaysia [[email protected]] 2 Professor Computer Science, Dean, Graduate School (Engg.), University Technology Malaysia [[email protected]]3 Director, Training & Education, Malaysian Maritime Academy, Malacca, Malaysia [[email protected]]

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Towards A Digital Repository of Ship-Operations

Introduction Knowledge-capture &

Repository Building Knowledge-capture Arena Knowledge-capture

Methodology Information and Knowledge

visualization Domain and Task Ontology Knowledge capture at sea Digital Repository

Conclusion Digital Ship Singapore 2009 22nd - 23rd Sept.

Source: Novak & Cañas, 2008

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Towards A Digital Repository of Ship-Operations:

INTRODUCTION

In a survey by the Delphi Group (Schoonover, 2006), it was discovered that more than 40% of the knowledge of an organization exists solely in the brains of their employees.

Digital Ship Singapore 2009 22nd - 23rd Sept.3

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INTRODUCTION

I shall discuss Capture of the

knowledge and experiences of the ships officers/ engineers

Built up over the years & which is constantly enriched through on board exposure and experience.


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INTRODUCTION

Capt Nicholas Cooper Expressed his

concern in Seaways (September, 2009) About the danger of a

possible depletion of this knowledge-base due to the reduced sea-time built into the training of cadets and junior officers.


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INTRODUCTION

While referring to traditional training in MET Institutes, Dr Barry Strauch of US National Transportation Safety Board, said in the US Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) Seminar on Bridge Resource Management (Strauch, 2008) that “Traditional training primarily: Ensures familiarity Overlooks proficiency Overlooks most challenges presented by

highly automated systems”


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INTRODUCTIONAt the same conference, Captain George Sandberg, Professor and Director of Nautical Science Simulation at the US Merchant Marine Academy said "Advanced navigation systems are being fitted and used aboard

ships at a rate faster than best practices are established. Many ships today are using ECDIS routinely, but the best practice

for the use of that equipment has not really been established. Do the majority of today's mariners know how to use this new

equipment effectively or correctly? And, of even more concern, due to self-teaching, do they really

understand the capabilities of the equipment, or do they have misunderstandings of how to use it?"



INTRODUCTIONRecognizing that in today’s shipboard

practice, Procedural changes are very dynamic, it

becomes evident that MET institutions require Constant updating and Revision of knowledge delivery using

technology In order to keep pace and remain

relevant in the fast changing maritime industry.


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Managing teaching and learning at the MET institutions is also becoming increasingly more challenging.



INTRODUCTION

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In previous decades, MET lecturers could fall back on their own rich and varied shipboard experiences.

Today some find themselves lacking in many areas of operational knowledge, whilst others may be lacking on knowledge of the latest equipment on board.

The books, which once used to be good sources of information are also dated and cannot provide the updated knowledge sought by ships’ officers and MET lecturers.Digital Ship Singapore 2009 22nd - 23rd

Sept.10


INTRODUCTION

11Digital Ship Singapore 2009 22nd - 23rd

Sept.11


KNOWLEDGE CAPTURE & REPOSITORY BUILDING

Knowledge-capture ArenaSerova (2009) revealed findings at Intel, when they studied contributions of various learning sources towards actual productivity at the workplace.


Sept.12



Knowledge-capture Arena Hence, capturing through work-integrated leaning appears lucrative, especially in maritime, where learners frequently revisit MET institutions to fulfill their STCW requirements.

This allows for a shipboard knowledge-capture arena , which could function as a knowledge-lab for learners.


Sept.13



Knowledge-capture Arena Given the right

assignments and adequate guidance, the learner could help populate and update the institutional knowledgebase with regular update cycles.

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Stephen Downes (2004.) says: Knowledge Capture “consists of being able to capture those artifacts, of being able to recognize the salient features of the context of transmission, of being able to store them in digital form, and of being able to recognize new contexts in which the same transmission would be of value. Though this sounds daunting, it has already been accomplished in simple form; the trick is to make it work with the complexity and richness of actual human communication.”




Knowledge-capture Methodology

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To simplify the shipboard experience transfer to the MET Institute, we plan to build the domain knowledge using Concept maps, which are frequently used for

knowledge elicitation and visual depiction of knowledge

Concept maps describe a domain using simple graphical representation of concepts, which are shown as nodes and the relationships between these concepts are sown as arcs.

Earlier work: Chatterjea, 2006; Chatterjea and Nakazawa, 2007; Chatterjea and Nakazawa, 2008.




Knowledge-capture Methodology

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“Information visualization has been a research topic for many years, leading to a mature field where guidelines and practices are well established.

Knowledge visualization, in contrast, is a relatively new area of research that has received more attention recently due to the interest from the business community in Knowledge Management.”[ Cañas et al. 2005]




Information and Knowledge visualization

Digital Ship Singapore 2009 22nd - 23rd Sept.

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Sept.18




19Digital Ship Singapore 2009 22nd - 23rd Sept.19




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“Ontological analysis clarifies the structure of knowledge.

The first reason is that they form the heart of any system of knowledge representation.

If we do not have the conceptualizations that underlie knowledge, then we do not have a vocabulary for representing knowledge.

Thus the first step in knowledge representation is performing an effective ontological analysis of some field of knowledge.” (Chandrasekaran et al., 1998)




Domain and Task Ontology

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A domain ontology is a formalisation of the knowledge in a subject area (domain) such as stability, navigation, thermodynamics etc.

This could be considered as static knowledge from a particular perspective and is frequently referred to as declarative and classificatory (Ferguson-Hessler and de Jong, 1990; Cañas and Novak, 2006).

It is usually arranged hierarchically. Digital Ship Singapore 2009 22nd - 23rd Sept.21





Sept.22





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Domain and Task Ontology Task ontology is a formalisation of the knowledge necessary to solve a specific problem or task e.g. warming up the propulsion engine, changing over fuel or making fast of the vessel after arriving port

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Perhaps, the easiest channel of capturing updated operational knowledge from the practitioners is when our engineers/officers go to sea for their sea-time and get exposed to both domain ontology as well as the procedural knowledge as practiced on board.




Knowledge capture at sea

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Appropriate assignments should be given to the engineers and officers to capture these ontologies.

The process will ensure currency of both types of the ontologies discussed earlier and as the engineers/ officers are placed on various ships, the different case-studies captured will enrich the knowledge-base with adequate diversity.

Thus, the trainee officers/engineers would be asked to develop their portfolios of organised knowledge, which could be vetted by seniors on the ships and by the facilitators at the MET Institute, before these are allowed to populate a digital repository at the Institute.




Knowledge capture at sea


Sept.27



Project Scope

1, 2 & 3

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Visual ontologies with resources attached to nodes lend themselves as efficient knowledge organisers and are reported to be suitable for digital libraries or repositories with text-based searching facility.

Concept maps created by learners serve as summarization of a domain.




Digital Repository

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The planned repository will be capable of renewal and updating of shipboard operational knowledge with dynamic inputs from shipboard practitioners.

This will serve the learner community well at the MET institutions and over a period of time, will have the potential to provide just-in-time knowledge for solving ships’ operational problems.




Digital Repository

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The paper described a large-scale knowledge-based project plan to improve teaching and learning undertaken at the Malaysian Maritime Academy.

The experience gained in smaller pilot projects earlier; provide the impetus for this project.

The project has the potential to reduce the knowledge and proficiency gaps for the mariners of the future and thereby improve operational safety and reduce human error.

For successful implementation, the project will need to get the support of industry stakeholders as well as technology support from the academia.


Towards A Digital Repository of Ship-Operations:CONCLUSION

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Thank you!



The Capture & Management of A Maritime Knowledge-base for Safety & Education

towards a digital repository

Education

merchant marine

malaysian

knowledge

repository

repository

capture amp

safety amp

capture methodology