Page 33 - 02

FORMAL SAFETY ASSESSMENT OF A FISHING VESSEL 33

The overall objectives of this paper are to analyse of the most important factors affecting fishing
vessels safety and to give guidance on how improvements in safety. For this purpose, a trial
application of a formal safety assessment on a generic fishing vessel was carried out. The
generic fishing vessel is a hypothetical vessel of any size and method of fishing. It is an
appraisal of the functions of operation that is necessary for any fishing vessel.

2. Formal Safety Assessment

Risk can be defined in many ways. According to the FSA guidelines, risk is the combination of
the frequency and the severity of the consequence. „Consequences‟ are the unwanted events
that can be negatively affect subjects of interest such as people, property, environment etc. On
the other hand, „frequency‟ is the number of occurrences of an undesirable event expressed as
events per unit of time. Risk does not mean actual danger but the possibility of danger (HSE,
2001). The word risk must contain the concept of probability that is something probable.
Finally, risk is a measure of the likelihood that an undesirable event will occur together with a
measure of the resulting consequence within a specified time i.e. the combination of the
frequency and the severity of the consequence (MSC 76/Inf. 3).

The problem of risk led to the development of risk related disciplines like Risk Analysis, Risk
assessment and Risk Management. Risk analysis is the systematic use of available information
to identify hazards and to estimate the risk to individuals or populations, property or the
environment; Risk assessment is to review the acceptability of risk that has been analyzed and
evaluated based on the comparison with standarts or criteria that define the risk tolerability;
Risk management is the application of risk assessment with the intention to inform the decision
making process with the appropriate risk reduction measures and their possible implementation
(IEC, 1994).

According to the Guidelines, “FSA is a rational and systematic process for assessing the risk
related to the maritime safety and the protection of the marine environment and for evaluating
the costs and benefits of IMO‟s options for reducing these risks. FSA‟s basic philosophy is that
it can be used as a tool to facilitate transparent decision making process that provides a clear
justification for proposed regulatory measures and allowing comparison of different option of
such measures to be made‟.

The Formal Safety Analysis can be developed into five steps as follows:
Step 1: Identification of hazards,
Step 2: Assessment of the risks,
Step 3: Risk control options or risk ranking,
Step 4: Cost benefit assessment of the risk management,
Step 5: Recommendations for decision-making between options available.

Fig. 1 shows that how each step of the FSA is interrelated with each other.

Sayı 1, 2015 GiDB|DERGi