Abstract
In maritime safety research, risk is assessed usually within the framework of formal safety assessment (FSA), which provides a formal and systematic methodology to improve the safety of lives, assets, and the environment. A bespoke application of FSA to mitigate accidents in marine seismic surveying is put forward in this paper, with the aim of improving the safety of seismic vessel operations, within the context of developing an economically viable strategy. The work herein takes a close look at the hazards in North Sea offshore seismic surveying, in order to identify critical risk factors, leading to marine seismic survey accidents. The risk factors leading to undesirable events are analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively. A risk matrix is introduced to screen the identified undesirable events. Further to the screening, Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) is presented to investigate and analyse the most critical risks of seismic survey operation, taking into account the lack of historical data. The obtained results show that man overboard (MOB) event is a major risk factor in marine seismic survey operation; lack of training on safe work practice, slippery deck as a result of rain, snow or water splash, sea state affecting human judgement, and poor communication are identified as the critical risk contributors to the MOB event. Consequently, the risk control options are focused on the critical risk contributors for decision-making. Lastly, suggestions for the introduction and development of the FSA methodology are highlighted for safer marine and offshore operations in general.
Highlights
Despite the latest efforts to encourage the use of renewable energy sources, the world at large still relies on crude oil and petroleum-based products (Patel et al 2015)
Risk matrix and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) have been selected in this study to evaluate the risk of a marine seismic survey operation
These two notable techniques have been selected in a complementary manner because they both provide a quick method to graphically recognise the risks of the marine seismic survey operation
Summary
Despite the latest efforts to encourage the use of renewable energy sources, the world at large still relies on crude oil and petroleum-based products (Patel et al 2015). The survey activity takes place with the rest of the other ocean activities in the area of oil field developments, namely, intense shipping and fishing operations This last point underlines a significant threat to the safety of the crew and the on-/ in-water seismic equipment (especially if the environment is not well investigated or assessed). G. Asuelimen et al.: Formal Safety Assessment of a Marine Seismic Survey Vessel Operation, Incorporating Risk Matrix and Fault. In order to improve the navigational safety in the Yangtze River, the author estimated the navigational risk of the Yangtze River using the FSA concept and incorporated BN technique to address the issue of cause and effect confusion while tackling the issue with expert judgement. In addition to the significance of this paper, a complex marine seismic survey operation with dynamic risk is simplified, using the two aforementioned quantitative risk analysis methods
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