Exploring the ship operation safety indicators of international ports in Taiwan

Abstract

Port safety plays an important role in port operations. Ship size has become larger and the port environment has rapidly changed in recent years. Ship accidents occur in the port area due to the complex environment in the port area. To improve past decision analysis methods on port operation safety fields and reduce fatalities and financial loss for potential accidents, the novelty of this study is to construct a safety index of ports with the application of the Best Worst Method (BWM). Four dimensions and 14 indicators were summarized based on an intensive literature review. The BWM was implemented to prioritize the weights of dimensions and indicators. Based on 21 expert questionnaires, the results indicate that the ranking of dimensions is ‘human’, ‘ship facilities’, ‘port facilities’, and ‘documentation check’. Regarding the ranking of indicators, the top three are ‘fire-fighting and life-saving equipment’, ‘captain’, and ‘pilot’. Safety improvement strategies (e.g. revising inappropriate operational rules and strengthening human safety education and training) based on these research findings are provided. The merits of this paper are presenting a simpler questionnaire-filling method and overcoming the traditional complicated questionnaire survey process and research limitations (e.g. indicator independence problems in the Analytic Hierarchy Process, and the complexation of filling out a questionnaire in the Analytic Network Process). In addition, the findings can help decision-making for port management authorities, port practitioners, and shipping operators (shipowners) regarding policy implementations of port safety.