Maritime Risk Modelling and Decision Making

Abstract

The objective of this special issue is to promote research and development on maritime (marine and offshore) risk modelling and decision making. In recent years, several serious accidents including the 'Prestige' incident and the 'Piper Alpha' tragedy have focused great attention on maritime safety. Studies on how similar accidents may be prevented have been carried out at both national and international levels. The maritime industry is moving from a largely prescriptive safety regime to a risk-based goal-setting regime. The responsibility for safety is being placed on those in the industry to set out and justify their basis for managing the risks. Such a change will create new perspectives on risk-based decision making. It is believed that a change from 'Tell me what to do' to 'Show me how to do it' and then to 'Involve me in it' will also take place in the maritime industry. Generally speaking, the current awareness of maritime safety is becoming wide spread. It seems that safety-based design and operations are probably now common knowledge even though they are not common practice. Now, let us take a quick tour through the seven papers included in this special edition. Firstly, the guest editor reviews some noteworthy marine and offshore accidents as well as the current status of maritime risk assessment. Special attention is directed to both the offshore safety case approach and formal safety assessment used in shipping with particular reference to their origins, application domains and future aspects. A brief discussion on the current research progress in maritime risk assessment is also given.Andrews presents recent developments in the safety regime for naval ship design. Two major aspects are dealt with. One is the implementation of naval ship classification introduced into the acquisition process of most major navies. The other is the role of the design authority for a new class of warships, given that the direct design of such vessels is no longer 'in-house'. This paper provides the reader with an opportunity of appreciating how the safety issues differ between naval ships and merchant vessels.Trbojevic proposes a dual risk criteria framework for the shipping industry based on a goal-setting approach to safety, requiring risk in the tolerability region to be as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP) within which there is a prescriptive target risk level. Appropriate risk acceptance criteria must be established in the preparation of a risk assessment. To formulate such criteria may be highly controversial. Trbojevic's proposal is that the prescriptive risk target level is intended for smaller companies satisfying the current safety and classification rules, while it is expected that leading companies would embrace the dynamic ALARP approach as a means of improving the current practice in the search for a better and more economic solution. It should be possible to formulate the societal risk criteria to be fully consistent with the often legally imposed individual risk criteria.Aksu et al. investigate the r...