Marine transportation safety index for hazardous materials
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Date
2018
Authors
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Publisher
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Abstract
The increasing number of demands for marine transportation of hazardous materials (HAZMAT), domestically or internationally indicates a positive sign for the growth of maritime shipping industry in terms of income generation. However, such rapid industrialization also has resulted in great increases in the number of marine transportation accidents involving HAZMAT. Marine transportation accidents such as explosion and leakage may result in physical damage and release of energy, which has a potential to expose human, facility and the environment to various dangerous consequences instantly. Scientific efforts towards assessing the operational safety of marine transportation of HAZMAT during loading and unloading operation are well established among researchers worldwide. However, an approach is taken to improvise the gap of existing safety assessment methods especially in assessing the causal factors of the marine transportation accidents due to limited information, hence this research was conducted. Therefore, a new index-based method known as the marine transportation safety index was proposed with taking into account several causal factors of marine transportation accidents and also the capability of port in handling HAZMAT transport operation. The index was developed based on various steps such as parameters ranking, assigning penalties score for each parameter, determining weightage based on the delphi-analytical hierarchy process method, conducting sensitivity analysis and also calculating operational values from the port survey which were categorized under two sub-indexes; the contributing factor index and the port capability index, respectively. In other words, the developed index can be applied as a quantifiable tool to assess any potential hazards and risks in the marine transportation operational stage especially during loading and unloading operation without requiring very complex calculation. Due to these advantages, the index could lead towards a comprehensive risk assessment in ensuring smooth operations and also achieving an inherently safer HAZMAT marine transportation. All the standard requirements in the international maritime dangerous goods code outlined by the international maritime organization were emphasized in order to ensure that all related safety criteria(s) in HAZMAT transport were well blended with the outputs gained from the developed index. Thus, in order to test the applicability and the effectiveness of the developed index towards risk assessment of individual ships, the real case studies at Port A, Johor and Port B, Sarawak were performed, respectively
Description
Thesis (PhD. (Chemical Engineering))
Keywords
Hazardous substances—Transportation, Shipping—Accidents, Risk Assessment—methods