Proposing a marine accident causation model using decomposed fuzzy analytic hierarchy process: An oil spill case

Abstract

Marine accidents, particularly resulting in oil spills at sea, pose significant environmental impacts. The consequences might trigger vulnerabilities to business continuity, regulatory compliance and sustainable development throughout green shipping. This study proposes a marine accident causation model to apply an oil spill case occurred during a routine bunkering operation of tanker ship at port. The proposed model takes the advantage of the Human Element Classification Scheme developed by International Maritime Organization (IMO-HECS) integrates it with a Decomposed Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (DFAHP). Due to the its significant role in various oil spill cases, the proposed model is sensitive to conduct in-depth human factor analysis. At this insight, IMO-HECS enables the hierarchical structure while DFAHP prioritizes accident-contributing factors under uncertainty. The case study illustrated that fatigue, lack of situational awareness, inadequate procedural and technical knowledge, supervisory deficiencies, and environmentally hazardous or poorly designed operational conditions were the key contributing factors to the oil spill accident during the bunkering operation. In addition, the analysis revealed alarming findings on latent factors (e.g., undetected structural degradation) that triggered human errors and potentially limited the effectiveness of operational controls. The study has potential to enable proactive measures against oil spills and to furtherly provide groundwork for AI-assisted next-generation green shipping initiatives.