Expert elicitation of a navigation service implementation effects on ship groundings and collisions in the Gulf of Finland

Abstract

When considering the implementation of a novel risk-control option, the estimation of its possible effects often relies on expert elicitation. This article presents an expert-knowledge-based preliminary assessment of how the deployment of Enhanced Navigation Support Information navigation service would affect the ship collisions and groundings in the Gulf of Finland. Experts probabilistically assess the service's direct effects on various factors, which are then utilized in collision and grounding probability Bayesian network models. The results indicate that implementing the Enhanced Navigation Support Information service could decrease the number of accidents. However, a comparison of the model outcomes to the experts' qualitative opinions reveals some discrepancies, which suggest that the elicitation procedure or the applied models might require further improvement. Nevertheless, with the proposed Bayesian approach, the model can be updated and uncertainties in the estimates reduced after more evidences are available later from longer and wider use of the service.

Bayesian networks for maritime traffic accident prevention: Benefits and challenges

“…It reflects the expert's knowledge, which is conditional on his/her background, experience, and interpretation of the problem. For example, when the author and her colleagues modeled the effects of implementing a novel navigational service in the Gulf of Finland (Hänninen et al, 2014a), it was found that the shipping company representatives had a very different view on Vessel Traffic Service effect to accidentavoidance than the VTS operators and authorities. Another own study (Hänninen et al, 2014b) also showed differences in the experts' assessments, this time regarding maritime safety management.…”

“…This could have an effect on the outcome. In the previously mentioned navigational service study (Hänninen et al, 2014a), the experts had to assess 1050 probabilities in total. After constructing the models with the experts' estimations, a comparison of the BN outcomes to the experts' qualitative opinions revealed some discrepancies.…”

“…1 and some other published BN models, it can be summarized that they have covered various maritime traffic safety and risk matters such as the ship-ship collision or grounding occurrence (Friis-Hansen and Simonsen, 2002;Det Norske Veritas, 2003;Rambøll, 2006;Hänninen and Kujala, 2012;Hänninen et al, 2014a;Akhtar and Utne, 2014), accidents and their consequences (Antao et al, 2009;Hänninen et al, 2013;Kelangath et al, 2011;Li et al, 2014;Goerlandt and Montewka, 2014;Montewka et al, 2014;Konovessis et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2013;Kristiansen, 2010), post-accident procedures and their costs (Eleye-Datubo et al, 2006;Montewka et al, 2013;Lehikoinen et al, 2013;Sarshar et al, 2013a;Norrington et al, 2008), human reliability analysis (Martins and Maturana, 2013) safety inspection findings (Hänninen and Kujala, 2014), safety management (Hänninen et al, 2014b) and other maritime organizational aspects (Trucco et al, 2008). The main purpose of the models has been either in characterizing the overall patterns between the model variables or performing inference on certain variables of interest.…”

A proactive approach for maritime safety policy making for the Gulf of Finland: Seeking best practices

“…A mandatory ship reporting system (GOFREP) for monitoring ship movements in the international waters of the GoF was established under the framework of the IMO in 2004 [53]. Recently, a regional project led by a private foundation has developed an Enhanced Navigation Support Information (ENSI) service for the GoF [57,58]. The ENSI service aims at enhancing information exchange regarding, for example, routes and weather conditions between ships and the VTS center, and it is currently in test use.…”

Assessing Grounding Frequency using Ship Traffic and Waterway Complexity

“…68 result in ineffective or even wrong risk control options (see for example Montewka et al, 2014Montewka et al, , 2014aHänninen et al, 2014). Therefore, the aim of this article is twofold: firstly we study the statistical dependency between ship traffic and the frequency of GA; secondly we assess the relation between the waterway complexity and the frequency of GA.…”