The Study of Risk Assessment Method for Ship Berthing Based on the “Human-Ship-Environment” Synergy

Abstract

Berthing is one of the most dangerous phases in the process of ship navigation, and its risk assessment is crucial for both ship safety and port scheduling. To effectively enhance the safety and reliability of the berthing process, a berthing risk assessment method based on the synergy of “human-ship-environment” has been established. First, the impact of the human, ship, and environmental factors on berthing risk was analyzed, and a risk assessment index system for ship berthing was constructed. Then, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE) methods were employed for a comprehensive risk assessment. AHP was used to determine the weight of each factor reasonably, while FCE was applied for the evaluation of the berthing risk. Finally, the proposed method was applied to evaluate the berthing operations of two ships, namely the KCS ship type and the S-175 large passenger ship type, at the Qingdao Intelligent Ship Testing Field, China. The experiment’s results indicate that the evaluation results of the method proposed here have good consistency with the expert survey method.

Keywords

• ship berthing
• risk assessment
• human-ship-environment synergy
• analytic hierarchy process (AHP)
• fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE)