Deconstructing the Costa Concordia Accident. New ways to improve safety at sea

Accidents have been part of the maritime industry since its beginning. Early attempts to reduce accidents were engineering in nature, even though since the early 1990s the focus has shifted progressively on the role of human behavior and how that behavior factors into casualties. This research approaches the human factor in maritime accidents from multiple perspectives considering interactions among individual, organizational and regulatory levels, to propose eventually a new leadership model for maritime emergency management. This volume is divided in three sections focusing on: i) the multilevel interactions that lead to the Costa Concordia accident and affected the unfolding of the emergency; ii) the rupture of the communication flows consequent to the failure of the chain of command, iii) weaknesses and strengths of current leadership and communication procedures. The proposed alternative leadership model, corroborated also through a focus group discussion organized at the Cyprus Institute of Marketing, is a combination of the current command and control vertical structure with a more horizontal leadership in which responsibilities, during a maritime emergency, are shared between the captain and other top officers.