Sleep Week Crew Endurance Management

This is National Sleep Awareness Week and the NTSB wants to share information on Crew Endurance Management. They write:

Endurance involves the body’s ability to maintain performance within safe limits while enduring psychological, environmental, and physiological challenges, Stevens said. Health, nutrition, stress, sleep, work schedules and noise levels all affect crew operations.

The issue in any situation involving transportation, whether it’s airplane, train, even a car or truck, is the fatigue issue, said Walter Blessey, chief executive officer of Blessey Marine Services in New Orleans. If someone goes to sleep when they’re involved in steering or running a piece of equipment, there can be serious consequences – maybe death.

Crew endurance management systems (CEMS) involve four categories:

* environmental factors, which are the effects of ambient temperature, noise and vibration on the human body;
* operational factors, which are the effects of company and boat policies;
* physiological factors, which are the effects of sleep, diet, exercise and shifts on the body and performance;
* psychological factors, which are the effects of stress and working conditions on performance.

Why is this an Important topic? Click this photo for the answer: