Safety analysis of fire and explosion (F&E) accidents risk in bulk carrier ships under fuzzy fault tree approach

Minimizing fire and explosion (F&E) accident risk in bulk carrier ships are of paramount to enhance safety in maritime transportation. Due to nature of cargo carried by bulk carrier ships, the fire and explosion risk is relatively high. Therefore, a detailed risk analysis is required to understand potential root causes of F&E accidents. This paper aims at performing risk analysis under fuzzy logic, fault tree analysis (FTA) and Cut Set Importance Measurement (CS-I) technique for F&E accidents in bulk carrier ships. Since the fault tree presents a robust graphical tool to explore the causes of system level failures, the fuzzy sets deal with vagueness and ambiguity in decision-making process. In addition, the CS-I technique is used in the study to reveal the most effective accident combinations in the formation of such accidents. The result of the paper shows that probability of the F&E risk on bulk carriers is 9.27E-02. The findings of the paper provide valuable insights to the ship owners, safety inspectors, Health, Safety, Environment and Quality (HSEQ) managers of bulk carrier ships based on the proposed control actions to reduce risk and improve operational safety.