No abstract is provided for this article.
Operations at sea-based fish farms can be challenging, and several risk dimensions are of concern during operations. Sea lice represent a challenge for the fish farmers who are required to perform delousing when the infestation levels rice above a set value. Delousing operations are frequently performed and require the use of heavy machinery operated from service vessels moored to the net-cages. Operators are exposed to hazards that may cause severe injuries and fatalities. Escape of salmon, which is a substantial environmental risk, has occurred in relation to delousing operations. Chemicals used during the operations may cause negative environmental consequences. Other safety related issues are the fish health and welfare. In this paper, a delousing operation on a fish farm is discussed with respect to different dimensions of risk, and potential conflicting objectives are discussed.
Norwegian fish farms are expanding into more exposed sites due to a lack of sheltered coastal locations and growing negative ecological consequences close to land. The severe wave and current conditions, irregular and often high winds, sheer remoteness, and limited weather window amplify the hazards during aquaculture operations. This paper presents a methodology for identifying hazards in aquaculture operations that take into account risks to personnel, material assets, the environment, fish welfare and food safety. The methodology considers the marine fish farm, its support service systems, external agents impacts, potential environmental disturbance and the likelihood of hazard interactions, and fish in the cage. The methodology has been used to analyse a net-cleaning operation, and the results show that it provides a good overview of hazards in a specific operation. The operator can have a better understanding of the nature of the operation to be better prepared for what can go wrong. The paper concludes that the risk assessment framework for aquaculture operation needs to be holistic to take into account multiple dimensions of risk, and the proposed methodology serves a good basis to develop the framework further. The paper also brings up the necessity to investigate further the definition of major accident and major accident hazards in aquaculture, especially for exposed fish farms that are exposed to different hazards comparing to the coastal fish farms today.
In recent years, International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the classification societies have issued a number of regulations and guidelines addressing both environmental performance and human safety of ships. All of these regulations and guidelines are aimed at building improved vessels, but environmental performance and human safety are usually considered separately. Sometimes, this results in the two issues conflicting with each other: a regulation that is intended to improve environmental performance may have negative effects on human safety and vice versa. The objective of this paper is to investigate the conflict and points towards the need for an integrated evaluation of both environmental performance and human safety of ships. As a basis, this paper provides several examples in which environmental performance and safety contradicts each other. Based on the examples, a conceptual description of the problem is provided, including suggestions for further work.
The Safe Return to Port (SRtP) regulation requires physically separated redundancy for passenger ships to ensure the safe return of the ship after a casualty. Although complying with this regulation significantly increases shipbuilding time and cost, the quantitative effect of this regulation on system reliability is not well known. The main objective of this article is to investigate the SRtP regulation by reliability analysis methods and show the effect of this regulation through case studies. This article suggests reliability analysis methods for two different modes of ship system operation; continuous mode of operation and low-demand mode of operation. Location fault tree and a Markov model are suggested, respectively. Two case studies focusing on fire and flooding for each mode of operation demonstrate that applying the SRtP regulation increases the system reliability substantially.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Since few or no human operators are directly involved in the operation of an autonomous marine system (AMS), an online risk model is necessary to enhance the intelligence of the AMS, its situation awareness, and decision making. The current study combines the system-theoretic process analysis (STPA) with Bayesian belief networks (BBNs) to develop online risk models for an AMS. Furthermore, fuzzy discretization is introduced to deal with evidence uncertainty. The proposed risk model can update the risk level as the operating conditions change, providing a basis for AMS supervisory risk control (SRC). A two-level SRC is proposed in this study. Using the operation of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) under sea ice as an example, the current work presents an online risk model and a corresponding SRC system, focusing on the navigation hazards to the AUV and its potential loss. The results of simulation studies show that the model enables the AUV to be informed of the risk level and to make risk-based decisions accordingly, thereby improving its intelligence. The importance of the evidence uncertainty in online risk models and SRC is analyzed and discussed. The results and conclusions of this analysis can be adapted to other AMSs.
This chapter discusses human factorHuman factor effects on the system risk levelRisk level and presents related quantification modelModel in this field. Human errors, response timeResponse times modelsModel, and methods for human factorsHuman factor analysis and quantification are discussed. First, background research on human factorHuman factor quantifications in risk assessmentsRisk assessment is presented (Sect. 5.1). Then, a general overview on the role of human operators and their effect on system failureFailure is discussed (Sect. 5.2). In Sect. 5.3, performance shaping factorsPerformance shaping factors (PSFs) that affect human behaviorHuman behavior are identified. Generally, human error quantification methods could be classified into two main categories: These two categories are presented and discussed in Sects. 5.4 and 5.5, respectively. Lastly, in Sect. 5.6, human response timeHuman response time modelsModel are presented. These modelsModel provide a better understanding on the timeline of the decision-makingDecision-making process of operators in emergencies that affect system risk levelRisk level significantly.
No abstract is provided for this article.
No abstract is provided for this article.
The management of aging of plants has become an important issue for oil and gas (O&G) companies that intend to extend the lifetime of their facilities. Important requirements are that the installations must be safe and economical to remain in operation. This can be achieved by implementing aging plant management programs to control and mitigate the degradation of the facilities. Aging plants have been a crucial topic for several years within the nuclear power industry, but it is a relatively novel area for the offshore O&G industry. To develop a successful aging plant management program for an existing offshore O&G installation, it is necessary not only to learn from the experience of other industries but also to understand and address the specific challenges for managing the aging of these facilities. The objective of this article is to outline these issues and to highlight future challenges. © 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 2011
The Norwegian fish farming industry is experiencing accidents that may have serious consequences for fish-farm operators, the environment, and the farmed fish themselves. Fatalities and serious personnel injuries, mass mortality of fish during and after operations, introgression of genes from farmed salmon, the spread of disease and material damage to assets are among the consequences. The reputation of the industry and the market value of its products may also suffer as a result of such incidents. Other industries have developed regulations aimed at preventing incidents called major accidents, which are usually defined as accidents that have different characteristics than occupational accidents. A holistic and efficient risk management system needs to cover all types of incidents. In spite of serious accidents, regulators have yet to adopt a holistic approach to the prevention of major accidents in Norwegian aquaculture. Here, we describe and discuss five main risk dimensions in the aquaculture industry that provide a holistic view of the complex risk picture of fish farming; fish welfare, personnel safety, risk to the environment, economic loss and food safety. Hazards that emerge in the fish production process and in the local environment, have consequences both for the fish farm and for society as a whole. On the basis of characteristics drawn from definitions of major accident regulations in other industries and the risk dimensions of fish farming, we propose a general definition of major accidents. The definition is discussed based on the type of risks that occur in fish farming, and with an emphasis on accidents that have happened in the Norwegian aquaculture industry. The occurrence of major fish farming accidents shows that a systemic approach to safety and risk management is needed. Regulators and industry are already looking to the offshore petroleum industry in order to develop and adapt technology and risk management for aquaculture. Approaches to risk regulation in the two industries are discussed and some differences pointed out. Barrier management is one of the potentially holistic and systemic major risk management methods required in offshore regulation that is seen as a possible way forward for the fish farming industry, and we offer some reflections on adopting this method to fish farming.
