Comprehensive risk estimation of maritime accident using fuzzy evaluation method – Focusing on fishing vessel accident in Korean waters

Abstract

Maritime accidents not only incur loss of human lives and physical damages to ships but also cause negative impact on marine safety weakening national competitiveness in maritime transportation. The government established national level plans to reduce maritime accidents. Fishing vessel accidents, among others, take up around 70% of the total maritime accidents in Korean waters.However, researches on fishing vessel accidents have not been studied much compared to commercial ship cases. In this regard, we evaluate risk level of fishing vessel accident with the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, where a fuzzy membership function is applied in an attempt to reduce the degree of uncertainty inherited in the given data.For the comprehensive (overall) risk, 9 types of fishing vessel accident are analyzed over the period of 1988–2016 years and risk value is compared against fuzzy risk criteria to determine the risk level. Also risks of each type of accident are calculated and classified into different risk levels.Since the comprehensive risks are calculated on a 100 scale on a yearly basis changes in risk levels are easily visualized year by year. The results obtained from our analysis will help a decision maker establish proper risk reduction measures to mitigate different types of accident and manage effectively the limited and/or scare resources to be employed. The evaluation method can be applied to risk estimation of other sea transportation accidents.