| Abstract | The safety of vessels has been of concern to mariners for centuries. Concepts of vessel stability, the possibility of capsizing, and structural integrity have been recognized by shipbuilders and operators from the beginning of marine shipping industry. The concepts of metacenter and restoring arm as initial stability criteria for small heel angles and practical methodologies for their evaluation were introduced in 18th century. The oldest traceable ship safety recommendations were found in the Venetian code of maritime law (13th century) requesting marking and inspection of the load line mark. After the Titanic tragedy the first International Conference on the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) took place in 1913-1914, but its recommendations on subdivision and damage stability were not adopted until the next SOLAS meeting in 1929. The 1992 report on the 'Herald of Free Enterprise' accident identified and recommended the need for replacement of prescriptive rules with performance based regulations. The UK Marine Safety Agency, in 1993, suggested to the IMO's Marine Safety Committee (MSC) the concept of formal safety assessment with respect to ship design and operations. The proposition was accepted and FSA became a high priority on the MSC agenda. The Formal Safety Assessment process has been defined by the IMO as: Structured and systematic methodology, aimed at enhancing maritime safety, including protection of life, health, the marine environment and property by using risk analysis and cost benefit assessment. The method is applicable to consider the safety of vessels in a global sense (all systems) or to take into account subsystems or individual aspects of safe operations. It could be applied in situations where risk needs to be reduced but required decisions are not clearly defined and need to be analysed. It can be applied during ship design stages or to analyse single operational aspects of existing vessels. The process can be used to validate existing and/or new regulations developed applying prescriptive or risk based principles. This paper discusses aspects of FSA procedures and its implementation into deployment and validation of new regulations for vessels. |
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