Societal risk acceptance criteria of the global general cargo ships

Abstract

The societal risk acceptance criteria (SRAC) are used in the shipping industry as a ruler to judge whether the actual ship risk is in control. To exploringly refresh SRAC for general cargo ship formulated by International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 2000, a comprehensive analysis was performed by using the accident data recorded in the Marine Casualties and Incidents (MCI) module of the Global Integrated Shipping Information System (GISIS) database from 2005 to 2019. The risk levels of four typical accident factors, including initial event, ship size, classification society, and geographical zone, were evaluated. The results illustrate that the SRAC established in this study for general cargo ship fatality accidents are found stricter than that by IMO presented in 2000. Fire/explosion and capsizing show the highest societal risk levels in the initial events, and large general cargo ships face higher societal risk. In addition, ships that do not belong to the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) are at a higher risk than IACS ships. And the societal risk levels of fatality accidents in East & Southeast Asia and injury accidents in Europe, the Mediterranean & Black Sea are higher than those in the other zones.