Criteria for establishing risk acceptance

摘要

In the maritime industry the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is the UN organization responsible for developing international safety and environmental protection regulations. IMO has recently developed the "Guidelines for FSA for use in the IMO rule making process". This standard is, as far as the author knows, the first risk assessment standard adopted in an UN organization. Paralleling the development of the guidelines there have been a number of applications of the guidelines, recently focusing on bulk carrier safety. Bulk carrier safety has been a challenge for IMO and the industry, in particular after heavy losses in the early nineties. As the problems mainly relates to structural components, the FSA studies have to some extent applied Structural Reliability Analysis (SRA) in order to quantify the effect of Risk Control Options (RCOs) that have been proposed to mitigate the risk. The paper briefly reviews FSA and SRA describing similarities and differences relating risk acceptance criteria. The main point in the paper is that the traditional risk acceptance criteria established in SRA can not be used consistently in an FSA. Criteria based on the As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP) principle and cost-effectiveness may play a more prominent role if the two methods shall be integrated. The consequence of this change is exemplified with one of the few studies that are available. It is observed that the actual change of practice in terms of costs to the industry (e.g. structural material used) is limited. The case studies are based on experiences from the maritime industry. However, it should be pointed out that SRA is used in many industries and that similar debates take place elsewhere. The proposed approach is expected to be more generally applicable.