A seafarer’s reliability assessment incorporating subjective judgements

Abstract

More than 80% of international cargo moves through seaports, making a contribution to the world economy. As a result, the performance of seafarers plays a major role in the safety of international trade and the maritime environment. This paper presents a novel approach to monitoring the performance of seafarers in terms of their conditional reliability. Unlike a traditional reliability analysis of a seafarer, this approach contains a dynamic model capable of coping with continually changing conditions that affect a seafarer’s performance. The proposed methodology enables and facilitates decision makers to assess the performance of a seafarer before his or her designation to any activities and during his or her seafaring period. To evaluate a seafarer’s reliability, a generic model is constructed and a combination of different techniques such as fuzzy logic, a fuzzy rule base, an analytical hierarchy process, evidential reasoning, a mapping process and expected utility is used. Furthermore, by changing the conditions that affect the reliability of an ideal seafarer and through calculating a value for this reliability, a benchmark is constructed. A seafarer’s reliability depends upon many variables and their dependencies; alteration of a criterion value will ultimately alter a seafarer’s reliability. In order to correct any deviation on time, a seafarer’s reliability has to be measured appropriately and regularly.