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Safe handling operations for container terminals significantly determine whether cargos can be successfully delivered. However, the container terminals involve frequent container operations with heavy machinery and accidents occur quite often, causing financial losses, injuries and even deaths. Since various handling operations cannot guarantee absolute safety as well as many of these operations have substantial risks that can cause losses, we find safe handling operations a topic worthy of in-depth investigation. This study analyzed risk factors influencing safe handling operation problems with complicated cause-effect relationships and their correlations; hence, the main purpose of this article was to apply the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory method to evaluate the core risk factors of the container handling operations at Kaohsiung port in Taiwan. This article first sorted out five major risk aspects with 17 risk factors through interviews with other scholars and direct investigation at Kaohsiung port. Then, based on the questionnaire surveys, we used the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory method to analyze the cause-effect relationships of each risk factor. To clearly explain the relationship between each risk factor shown in the cause-effect diagram, the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory results finally showed four quadrants and their corresponding risk factors. To achieve our research purpose, the seven core risk factors in the first quadrant are identified,

Because risk assessment of safety operations in exclusive container terminals at Kaohsiung port involves a host of complex considerations and uncertain information, we therefore use a fuzziness-based method to minimize the effect of such adverse factors and clarify the assessment process in this article. This article therefore uses fuzzy risk assessment steps to evaluate safety operations in exclusive container terminals at Kaohsiung port in Taiwan. This article first employs three risk assessment steps and then identifies a total of four dimensions with 16 risk factors from the literature and interviews with experts. After proposing a systematic fuzzy risk analysis and evaluation steps in order to determine risk levels, this article conducts an empirical study of Kaohsiung port by means of a survey. The empirical results reveal that (1) the leading factor influencing risk frequency is ''communication misunderstanding,'' (2) the leading factor influencing risk severity is ''human negligence and error,'' and (3) three risk factors are located in the high-risk area, while the other 13 risk factors are in the medium-risk area, and no risk factors are in the low-risk area. Furthermore, the analysis of the various risk factors suggests the adoption of three risk management strategies.

Service delivery system, Port of Kaohsiung, Fuzzy quality function deployment (fuzzy QFD),

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