Opening address

摘要

It gives me the greatest pleasure to be here today to give the opening address for this timely conference about one of the last frontiers of seafaring; the human factor in ship design and operations. Although we see larger and faster ships coming into service and new types of propulsion, there is a tacit assumption that the human element in these new, technical, developments is merely a matter of training, a reduction in manpower and adapting the old to suit the new.