THE EFFECT OF STRESS INOCULATION ON SHIP-SIMULATOR TRAINING IN NOVICE SHIP DRIVERS

Abstract

In the past decade, twelve major mishaps at sea have occurred onboard U.S. Navy (USN) ships, two of which resulted in the combined loss of 17 U.S. Sailors. A comprehensive review of these incidents was conducted and the results were released in November 2017. The findings and action items from the comprehensive review were clear: integrate fatigue and stress management training into Surface Warfare Officer training and enlisted leadership development courses. The goal of this thesis is to start to address these action items, beginning with stress management, to find an effective tool to induce stress during training while driving a ship. This experiment collected data on 50 participants’ ship-driving performance while navigating a scenario in a Kongsberg ship-bridge simulator located in the Human Systems Integration (HSI) lab at the Naval Postgraduate School. Physiological data was collected during the participants’ time in the lab in order to analyze the effects of stress between three different groups: Control Group, Ice Bucket Group, and Cold-Water Perfusion System Group. Data extracted from the Kongsberg ship-bridge simulator allowed us to analyze standard performance metrics such as accuracy and speed for each ship-driving scenario the participants completed. The results of our analysis will allow us to make recommendations to the Surface Warfare Officer School on stress inoculation training in the context of a maritime domain.