Formal Safety Assessment

Collision and grounding are among the most common causes for ship disasters.

As a consequence there is a growing interest to apply the method of formal safety assessment (FSA) in the shipbuilding and shipping environment to continuously assess and monitor the risk level in a given area.

In the summer of 1996 IMO published “Draft Guidelines for Application of Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) to the IMO rule-making process”.

The Guidelines for Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) for use in the IMO rule-making process, including amendments, were approved in 2002 (MSC/Circ.1023/MEPC/Circ.392).

The high-speed craft rules require risk analysis to be performed and new non-standard tanker designs require detailed oil out-flow analysis. Thus administrations, ship owners, shipyards, consultants, and educational institutions are now facing the situation where they have to apply FSA-methods in ship designs.

At present very limited quantitative data exists for application of risk-based models. Therefore, it is the objective of the present work to develop rational tools for assisting in applying FSA methods.