Risk based rulemaking and design: Proceed with caution

Safety and Reliability, 2007

Risk-based ship design is a formalised methodology that integrates systematically risk assessment in the design process with prevention/reduction of risk (to life, property and the environment) embedded as a design objective, alongside "conventional" design objectives (such as speed, capacity, etc). This paper aims at providing a comprehensive overview of the basic elements of the methodology, including reference to applicable risk and other design criteria. The approach goes beyond other formal procedures for risk quantification, risk assessment and risk management existent in various contexts (for instance the Formal Safety Assessment for developing rules, the Safety Case approach for specific design/operational solutions), in that it takes into account mechanisms for trade-offs between safety and other design factors by utilising overlaps between performance, life-cycle cost considerations, functionality and safety at parameter level. The paper also exemplifies the use of the methodology by presenting a framework for application for the case of carriage of dangerous goods by sea.

2016

Design for Safety" refers to a design paradigm introducing safety in design as another objective. This requires explicit consideration and quantification of safety, which is equivalent to evaluating risk during the design process; hence the term "Risk-Based Design". The essential advance attributable to Risk-Based Design is the holistic, explicit, rational and cost-effective treatment of safety, without which optimal design solutions are not feasible. This is achieved on the basis of principles that support multi-discipline design optimisation and promote the use of knowledge in all forms. More specifically: • A formalised procedure to measure safety consistently (risk analysis / risk assessment / risk management). • Flexibility to allow trade-offs between Performance, Earnings, Risk and Costs; hence focus on life-cycle issues. • Integration of such procedure in the design process (integrated design environment) with focus on holistic optimisation. The "Design for Safety" philosophy and the ensuing formalised methodology, "Risk-Based Design (RBD)" were introduced in commercial shipping as a design paradigm in the 1990s to help bestow safety as a design objective and a life-cycle imperative. This was meant to ensure that rendering safety a measurable (performance-based) design objective, through using first-principles tools, would incentivise industry to seek cost-effective safety solutions, in response to rising societal expectations. It turned out that removing rules-imposed (largely-conservative) constraints and the adoption of a performance-based approach has had much more profound effects than originally anticipated, the full impact of which is yet to be delivered. This is particularly true for knowledge-intensive and safety-critical ships, such as naval vessels and the giants of the cruise ship industry being built today, where the need for technological innovation creates unprecedented safety challenges that cannot be sustained by prescriptive-regulation-based safety. Drawing from the implementation of Risk-Based Design in the cruise ship industry, this paper presents and discusses the process of implementation and impact, demonstrating that all prerequisite scientific and technological developments are in place for Risk-Based Design to be fully implemented in the naval sector as the platform to deliver active, adaptive and affordable vessels.

2011

Safety management and risk profiling to identify substandard ships are of importance to the shipping industry. Whereas current methods rely heavily on detention risk and flag state performance, we extend the risk assessment by considering various risk dimensions and by evaluating a wide range of risk factors. Apart from detention risk, we consider also the risk of various types of

2007

While it is generally accepted that the overall level of maritime safety has improved in recent years, further improvements are still desirable. It is fair to say that much of maritime safety policy worldwide has been developed in the aftermath of serious accidents (such as 'Exxon Valdez', 'Estonia', 'Erika' and 'Prestige'). Industry circles have questioned the wisdom of such an approach. The safety culture of anticipating hazards rather that waiting for accidents to reveal them has been widely used in other industries such as the nuclear and the aerospace industries. The international shipping industry has begun to move from a reactive to a proactive approach to safety through "Formal Safety Assessment" (FSA) and "Goal Based Standards" (GBS). FSA was introduced by the IMO as "a rational and systematic process for accessing the risk related to maritime safety and the protection of the marine environment and for evaluating the costs and benefits of IMO's options for reducing these risks". The recent GBS approach aims to be another proactive instrument, and there has been recent discussion in the IMO on the possible links between FSA and GBS. This paper attempts to clarify some widely used, but confusing to many, notions such as Risk Based Rulemaking vs. Risk Based Design, and IMO's GBS Traditional Approach vs. Safety Level Approach, and the implications of their use, or misuse, to future ship rulemaking, design and safety. The paper elaborates on some identified weaknesses of the risk based approach which must be corrected, with an emphasis on environmental risk evaluation criteria, which is an area in which further research is deemed necessary.

Maritime Economics & Logistics, 2003

This report presents a comprehensive review of the maritime safety regimes and provides recommendations on how to improve the system. The results show a complex legal framework which generates a high amount of inspections and overlapping of inspection areas where no cross-recognition is established by the various stakeholders. While the safety system seems to be successful in eliminating substandard vessels and while average insurance claims costs are substantially lower for inspected vessels than not inspected vessels, the results indicate that the economic conditions of the shipping market also have an effect on safety quality besides the frequency of inspections. No significant differences can be found between industry inspections and port state control inspections with respect to decreasing the probability of casualty. The system could be made more effective by combining data sources on inspections and use them respectively to improve risk profiling and to decrease the frequency...

Erasmus Law Review, 2018

Transport Reviews, 2010

This report presents a comprehensive review of the maritime safety regimes and provides recommendations on how to improve the system. The results show a complex legal framework which generates a high amount of inspections and overlapping of inspection areas where no cross-recognition is established by the various stakeholders. While the safety system seems to be successful in eliminating substandard vessels and while average insurance claims costs are substantially lower for inspected vessels than not inspected vessels, the results indicate that the economic conditions of the shipping market also have an effect on safety quality besides the frequency of inspections. No significant differences can be found between industry inspections and port state control inspections with respect to decreasing the probability of casualty. The system could be made more effective by combining data sources on inspections and use them respectively to improve risk profiling and to decrease the frequency of inspections performed on ship types such as tankers. The results further indicate a lack of proper implementation of the International Safety Management Code (ISM code) and conventions with reference to working and living conditions of crew (ILO 147). A revision of the ISM code and more emphasis on enforcement of ILO 147 could further enhance the level of safety at sea.

2008

Commercial shipping of containerized goods involves certain risks for human safety and environment. In order to actively manage these risks, they must be identified, analyzed, modeled, and quantified. This requires a systematical analysis of design and operation of container vessels. Within the EU-funded research project SAFEDOR, a Formal Safety Assessment has been applied to establish the current safety level of generic container ships and to identify potential cost-effective risk control options. This paper describes a structured approach to develop the underlying high-level risk model. It is structured as risk contribution tree consisting of a series of fault trees and event trees for the major accident categories. Statistical analysis of casualty data is used to estimate the probability of occurrence. Finally, the summation overall individual risk contributions yields the current risk pro file for the operation of container vessels is presented as FN-curve.

1999

By examining 20 years data, the paper attempts to outline the safety and quality records of open registers, and to establish a relationship of accidental total loss rate with ship quality factors, e.g., certi®cate, crew performance and equipment indicated by detention rates. It con®rms that loss rate, detention rate and age of ships are highly correlated with each other. It shows that the loss rates and detention rates of open registers are above the world average, but with the exception of Liberia, Marshall Islands and Barbados. A new approach is suggested for assessment of ships safety score. Ó 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.