BOQA

Bridge Operations (or Operational) Quality Assurance (BOQA - pronounced BOUQUA or / bəʊ'kwɒ /) is a methodology utilised in shipping and which originates from the similar FOQA/FDM (Flight Operations Quality Assurance/Flight Data Monitoring) concept in aviation. BOQA is a methodology with which ship owners/operators, ship Captains, and other associated shipping stakeholders can automatically and systematically monitor, track, trend and analyse operational quality of (seagoing) vessels. The main target with BOQA is to provide a non-punitive platform for proactive analysis of vessel data to enable the enhancement of maritime safety . The BOQA methodology can be used in both conventional manned ships and in autonomous or unmanned vessels providing that adequate data sources are available.
History.
The original template for BOQA was laid out when Royal Caribbean approached Aerobytes Limited (a market leader in FOQA) to collaborate to provide a similar product for the maritime industry. https://www.aerobytes.co.uk/boqa/. Discussions were held as to what breaches of performance should be detected and two recorders were installed on RCCL vessels and discussions were also held with Carnival group to develop the BOQA concept. Aerobytes decided to focus on its core business of aviation and RCCL and Carnival went on to develop their own systems along with a few other companies who saw the potential. 
At present BOQA is not mandated and therefore there are no strict rules as to what an effective BOQA system should contain, but once the enormous potential is realised it is entirely possible that might change.
Description.
BOQA is best developed as a non-punitive company-internal methodology or process, which has the overall target of assisting the ship Captain and the ship operator to maintain a high level of safety and operational quality.
BOQA has been described as:
The Oil Companies International Marine Forum (OCIMF) published in June 2013 the "Recommendations on the Proactive Use of Voyage Data Recorder Information" and went forth with submitting these recommendations as an info paper to the IMO (NAV 59/INF.9) 12/07/2013 with the title "The proactive use of Voyage Data Recorder (VDR) information". Main aspect with this paper was to use the ship's VDR as a data source for proactive safety monitoring. This paper called for:
...and as such the paper described in essence a BOQA solution.
Methodology.
BOQA is used to objectively monitor the human operational performance and external factors, such as weather and other traffic around the vessel, by utilising various types of sensor and external data and comparing this data with defined best-practices and Standard operating procedure (SOPs). BOQA is usually not used to monitor the internal technical performance of the vessel machinery and equipment-base, which in most cases already has a wide range of proprietary monitoring and alarm functions.
BOQA is often a software system consisting of shipboard real-time data collection and sensing, automated data transmission between the vessel and shore and a shore-based system which receives, combines, analyses, alerts and stores the data according to defined rules and logic.
BOQA usually includes three "time-domains", ie:
Event types.
BOQA is a continuously developing methodology, much in the same way as FOQA. At present time BOQA solutions are known to be able monitor some of the following various event types some of which might include:
Inputs.
BOQA relies on data from various sources. Some data sources could be but are not restricted to:
Applications.
BOQA is not yet known to be officially mandated or regulated by any official maritime bodies, such as International Maritime Organization, Classification societies or Flag state administrations.
Royal Caribbean Cruise line stated in their 2012 Stewardship report that they were evaluating a BOQA system. 
Carnival Corporation & plc is known to have a large scale in-house developed BOQA solution, which consists of a data-system (Neptune) and a 24/7 manned Fleet Operations Centre in three locations around the world.
AS Tallink Group is known to be in the process of testing a BOQA solution.