Grant: Engage Grants Program

Research effort devoted to the development of a holistic risk assessment and management methodology for vessel operations in harsh environment is limited. This proposal intends to initiate a new research engagement with Lloyd's Register Applied Technology Group (ATG) to develop a new risk-based methodology to support operational considerations during marine navigation or transportation in Arctic environments. Three possible ship accident scenarios in Arctic transits will be investigated: i) collision, ii) grounding, and iii) foundering. Various factors related to harsh conditions and their effects on the abovementioned accident scenarios will be considered as a part of the proposed study. The Bayesian Network (BN) approach will be used to quantify the probability of a ship accident and the related consequences during navigation in Arctic waters. Consequence assessment will be conducted based on various loss scenarios including release of toxic chemicals and/or flammable gas, fire and explosion. This innovative methodology will integrate failure-updating mechanism with consequence assessment as a ship operates and new information become available; thus the method will estimate real-time risk. The assessed risk will be integrated into a decision-making framework to support the development and implementation of safety strategies. This project will benefit the industry partner, ATG, by developing an operational risk management methodology to better monitor and control the risk of marine operations in harsh environments. ATG can further develop the outcomes of the project to make it part of its software to enhance capabilities in dynamic risk monitoring and management of vessel operational risk. New understanding and knowledge developed specifically on operational risk assessment of marine operations in Arctic waters would provide greater confidence to Canadian industry, regulator and public in safe navigation in the Northern region.