A probabilistic safety assessment framework for arctic marine traffic using the evidential reasoning approach

The global warming has made arctic marine traffic possible, but the harsh navigation environment threatens its safety and restrains its development. It is necessary to evaluate the safety of arctic marine traffic environment. The evidential reasoning approach is used to establish a new hierarchical model for the safety evaluation due to its advantages such as being able to deal with uncertainty caused by ignorance or lack of knowledge. The model is based on objective environmental data of safety gathered from the arctic voyage of a general cargo vessel 'Tian You' and subjective judgements collected from domain experts. The safety evaluation results show that the locations in East Siberian and Laptev Sea have a generally safer environment for marine traffic than the one in Kara Sea. The proposed model validated by sensitivity analysis provides an informative and rigorous basis for decision making of arctic marine traffic.