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Fault-tree models of accident scenarios of RoPax vessels

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Abstract

Ro-Ro vessels for cargo and passengers (RoPax) are a relatively new concept that has proven to be popular in the Mediterranean region and is becoming more widespread in Northern Europe. Due to its design characteristics and amount of passengers, although less than a regular passenger liner, accidents with RoPax vessels have far reaching consequences both for economical and for human life. The objective of this paper is to identify hazards related to casualties of RoPax vessels. The terminal casualty events chosen are related to accident and incident statistics for this type of vessel. This paper focuses on the identification of the basic events that can lead to an accident and the performance requirements. The hazard identification is carried out as the first step of a Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) and the modelling of the relation between the relevant events is made using Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). The conclusions of this study are recommendations to the later steps of FSA rather than for decision making (Step 5 of FSA). These recommendations will be focused on the possible design shortcomings identified during the analysis by fault trees throughout cut sets. Also the role that human factors have is analysed through a sensitivity analysis where it is shown that their influence is higher for groundings and collisions where an increase of the initial probability leads to the change of almost 90% of the accident occurrence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unit of Marine Technology and Engineering, Technical University of Lisbon, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon, 1049-001, Portugal

    Pedro Antão & C. Guedes Soares

Authors
  1. Pedro Antão
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  2. C. Guedes Soares
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Correspondence to C. Guedes Soares.

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Pedro Antão graduated from Engineering Faculty of the Technical University of Lisbon (Instituto Superior Técnico) in 1998. He received his M.Sc degree from Heriot-Watt University, Scotland in 2000. Presently he is a Research Assistant at the Unit of Marine Technology and Engineering at the Technical University of Lisbon. His research interests include maritime accidents and the influence of human factors in their occurrence.

Carlos Guedes Soares received his M.Sc degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976, a Ph.D. degree from the University of Trondheim in 1984 and a Doctor of Science from the Technical University of Lisbon in 1991. Presently he is a Professor at the Engineering Faculty of the Technical University of Lisbon (Instituto Superior Técnico). His research interests include probabilistic modelling for risk and reliability analysis.

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Antão, P., Guedes Soares, C. Fault-tree models of accident scenarios of RoPax vessels. Int J Automat Comput 3, 107–116 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11633-006-0107-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11633-006-0107-8

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