Selection of safety measures in container ports

This paper aims to employ a fuzzy decision-making approach to evaluate risk control options and aid the selection of operational safety strategies in container terminals. The selection of appropriate safety strategies to optimise the operational safety performance (OSP) in container terminals imposing complex multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) under uncertainty is proposed. Therefore, a hybrid of MCDM models based on the fuzzy set theory is developed. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is first used to obtain the weights of all criteria while the fuzzy techniques for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (FTOPSIS) is then introduced to assess the ratings of operational safety strategies to optimise OSP. Finally, a real case study is conducted to prove the proposed model capability of modelling the selection of rational OSP for improving container port safety taking into account the cost factors. Furthermore, the results indicate that automation and operator training are among the most effective measures.