ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a section on leadership in emergencies, focused on passenger ships, where it is essential to understand the mechanisms of fear and how crowds behave. It provides teamwork and the study of groups and their phenomena, since it is difficult to explain how teams work without first understanding the dynamics that drive groups, and how people act when they are in groups. The book considers the most practical part of the manual, the study of the human factor on board ships, which would not be complete without an in-depth examination of the psychosocial factors that a sailor must face. It looks at the Vessel Traffic Services (VTS), since many sailors become traffic operators. The VTS have some shared characteristics with the workplace on board, but other characteristics are logically different.
