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FORMAL SAFETY ASSESSMENT OF A FISHING VESSEL 31

FORMAL SAFETY ASSESSMENT OF A FISHING VESSEL

Hakan AKYILDIZ*

*Istanbul Technical University

ABSTRACT

As the members of maritime industry awareness and sensitivity to the safety increase, more attention has
been directed to ship safety. More people demand control over risk to which they are exposed and to
model the uncertainties of risk and to seek measures of reduction. Therefore, this reality results in high
cost in safety and money. The main purpose of the paper is to review the process of Formal Safety
Assessment and to propose for a generic fishing vessel. In this circumference, a trial application of a
formal safety analysis was attempted. An interactive risk table method is presented to produce an overall
ranking for further attention in fishing vessel design and operation. Furthermore, a sample fault tree
analysis is applied to find the relative importance of each component. Finally, some suggestions are made
to reduce the risks and emphasized that more failure data needs to be collected on an industry basis and
that much expert judgement from a qualitative point of view is required in order to control risks.

Keywords: Fishing Vessel, Fishing Vessel Safety, Safety Assessment, Fault Tree

1. Introduction

The members of maritime industry are aware of and sensitive to the safety and, more attention
has been directed to ship safety. Therefore, more people demand control over risk to which they
are exposed and to model the uncertainties of risk and to seek measures of reduction. Thus, the
benefits of technology results in high cost taking into account the safety.

The offshore industry moved to a new era in risk assessment soon after the tragical accident of
the “Piper Alpha”. Piper Alpha was an oil and gas platform 110 miles from Coast of Aberdeen
in the North Sea that was built in 1976. On July 6, 1988 a gas processor had exploded and set
of a chain reaction which led to massive explosions that completely destroyed the platform in
three hours. The disaster caused 167 deaths out of the 228 working on board at that time. The
inquiry to investigate the causes of the disaster led to the largest safety reform in offshore
industry. Thus, “The Offshore Installation Regulations” issued by the UK Health and Safety
Exucutive (HSE, 2001) come into force in 1993. The regulations required operational safety
cases to be prepared for all existing offshore installations till November 1993 and both
operational and design safety cases for new installations.

In the maritime industry, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) implements the
principles of risk management and a systematic process called Formal Safety Assessment
(FSA). FSA was introduced as a process to assess risks and to evaluate costs and benefits of the
IMO‟s options for reducing these risks and, then, to provide support to the organization‟s
decision making process. FSA was proposed by the UK and based on the risk assessment
approach of the country‟s offshore industry. The IMO, initially in 1993, studied FSA at the
62nd meeting of MSC (marine and safety committee) following a proposal by the UK‟s Marine

Sayı 1, 2015 GiDB|DERGi