Port safety evaluation from a captain’s perspective: The Korean experience

Abstract

There are many factors affecting navigational safety in ports, including weather, the characteristics of the channels and vessel types, etc. This paper aims to identify the factors influencing navigational safety in ports and to analyze the extent to which such factors affect the safety of ports from the perspective of ship captains through a real case study. A quantitative analysis is carried out using the data collected from 21 captains who have over 10 years experience in operating ships individually. The identified factors indicate risk implications in ports. A fuzzy analytical hierarchy process is used to evaluate the importance of the factors and to rank the safety levels of the targeted ports in Korea from a captain's perspective. Consequently, among Busan, Ulsan, Gwangyang, Incheon, and Mokpo, Busan is evaluated by captains as the safest port, while Mokpo is the most risky. The research also reveals that it is applicable to use domain expert knowledge when historical failure data is unavailable or difficult to access to evaluate port safety. The result shows great research significance in terms of providing relevant stakeholders, such as port authorities and shipping companies, with an insight into port safety performance and thus facilitating the development of the associated risk control measures.

The evaluation and enhancement of quality, environmental protection and seaport safety by using FAHP

“…The weights vectors of performances and of KPIs under the performance and preferences vector of business processes for each KPI are calculated by using the method developed in Wu et al (2004). This can be denoted as the main difference between this paper and others Pak et al, 2015;Kaya and Kahraman, 2011;Hsu, 2012).…”

“…Different accidents could occur in ports, causing extensive loss of life, damage to vessels and cargo, serious water pollution and changes in biodiversity. The KPIs of seaport safety may be defined based on the literature (Pak et al, 2015;Trbojevic and Carr, 2000). Based on the literature review (Pak et al, 2015) and evidence data of Montenegro seaports, the following KPIs are identified as the most significant.…”

“…A traffic-related factor may be seen as the "volume of traffic inside a port" (Pak et al, 2015). While assessing this KPI, a comprehensive database of port accidents may be used.…”

“…This KPI deals with (1) weather conditions, such as wind speed, sea state and visibility (Balmat et al, 2009) and (2) channel conditions including the perspectives of depth, complexity and width (Pak et al, 2015).…”

“…This is due to the fact that much of the available data associated with port operations require a flexible but robust approach to the handling and updating of existing information with new data. As risk management activities are ori-ented toward safety, port safety evaluation (Pak et al, 2015) is the first step in overall safety enhancement. After quality management certification, the determining of performances of business processes is based on predefined critical success factors (Oakland, 2004).…”