Analytical strategic safety management in container ports

This paper aims to employ a fuzzy decision-making approach to evaluate risk control options and aid the selection of operational safety strategies in container terminals. The selection of appropriate safety strategies to optimize the Operational Safety Performance (OSP) in container terminals has been a key strategic consideration for many maritime stakeholders including terminal managers, ship-owners, surveyors and safety engineers. The nature of these decisions is complex Multiple Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) under uncertainty, having ambiguous and incomplete data contained in different quantitative and qualitative forms. To deal with the uncertainty, a hybrid of MCDM models based on fuzzy set theory is proposed in this paper. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is first used to obtain the weights of all the criteria while the Fuzzy Techniques for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (FTOPSIS) is then introduced to assess the ratings of operational safety strategies to optimize OSP. Finally, a case study is conducted to demonstrate the process of the applied method in practice. Consequently, it proves that the proposed model is capable of modeling safety strategy selection for rational OSP of container terminals through taking into account both risk and cost factors.