Enhancing maritime education and training: Measuring a ship navigator's stress based on salivary amylase activity

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose that the measurement of salivary amylase activity is an effective index to evaluate the stress of a ship navigator for safe navigation training and education. Design/methodology/approach Evaluation comes from the simulator and actual on-board experiments. The subjects are real captains who have unlimited licenses and cadets who are senior students at Kobe University, navigation course. Stress is evaluated for several situations where a ship navigator makes a lot of decisions, in this case in a narrow passage, entering a port and leaving a port. Findings Salivary amylase activity occurs when a ship navigator makes a decision regarding ship handling and collision avoidance. By measuring salivary amylase activity when a student is under duress, cadets' ship-handling training can be evaluated while onboard a vessel. Research limitations/implications Future research will develop cross-indices with the salivary amylase activity and other physiological indices (nasal temperature and heart rate variability (R-R interval)), complementary to each other. The salivary amylase activity registers the stress quickly on the spot. Then the nasal temperature and R-R interval registers the trend and the quick response to the stress (mental workload). Practical implications The paper describes an effective index which is useful for evaluating a ship navigator's stress for safe navigation. Originality/value Ship navigator's skill and cadet's on-board training have been evaluated according to performance and a questionnaire as a quantitative evaluation; moreover, stress is evaluated using salivary amylase activity.