The SAIMENA Cape Branch invites you to attend the following meeting on 28-May-2026 at 1730:
Presentation: The study of human factors within an engineering measurement campaign on the SA Agulhas II
Place: Survival Centre, Granger Bay
Speaker: Dr Nicole Taylor PhD (Mechatronic Engineering), Stellenbosch University
South Africa’s polar supply and research vessel, the SA Agulhas II, has been a valuable platform for advancing research into ship behaviour and human factors of an ice-going ship during real-world operations since 2012. Drawing on over a decade of full-scale measurements on the SA Agulhas II, this presentation will offer a rare look inside a long-running full-scale measurement campaign conducted on board to understand the human experience of living and working on board a ship operating in one of the world’s most demanding environments.
Focusing on a unique dataset collected on a winter research voyage, the presentation will showcase research into motion sickness as a critical human factor, combining subjective responses – captured through a purpose-built mobile app and paper-based questionnaires – with objective ship motion measurements from an onboard sensor network.
By linking motion characteristics to actual human responses, seasickness criteria that translate ship operation into human perception were generated, offering data-driven insights for voyage planning and ship design.
