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IMO - Formal Safety Assessment
IMO - Formal Safety Assessment
What is FSA?
FSA is a 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. FSA can be used as a tool to help in the evaluation of new regulations for
maritime safety and protection of the marine environment or in making a comparison between
existing and possibly improved regulations, with a view to achieving a balance between the
various technical and operational issues, including the human element, and between maritime
safety or protection of the marine environment and costs.
FSA consists of five steps:
1. identification of hazards (a list of all relevant accident scenarios with potential causes and
outcomes);
2. assessment of risks (evaluation of risk factors);
3. risk control options (devising regulatory measures to control and reduce the identified
risks);
4. cost benefit assessment (determining cost effectiveness of each risk control option); and
5. recommendations for decision-making (information about the hazards, their associated
risks and the cost effectiveness of alternative risk control options is provided).
In simple terms, these steps can be reduced to:
Related Links
Circulars
MSC/Circ.1180-MEPC/Circ.474
MSC-MEPC.2/Circ.5
1. What might go wrong? = identification of hazards (a list of all relevant accident scenarios
with potential causes and outcomes)
2. How bad and how likely? = assessment of risks (evaluation of risk factors);
3. Can matters be improved? = risk control options (devising regulatory measures to control
and reduce the identified risks)
4. What would it cost and how much better would it be? = cost benefit assessment
(determining cost effectiveness of each risk control option);
5. What actions should be taken? = recommendations for decision-making (information
about the hazards, their associated risks and the cost effectiveness of alternative risk
control options is provided).
Application of FSA may be particularly relevant to proposals for regulatory measures that have
far reaching implications in terms of costs to the maritime industry or the administrative or
legislative burdens that may result.
This is achieved by providing a clear justification for proposed regulatory measures and allowing
comparison of different options of such measures to be made. This is in line with the basic
philosophy of FSA in that it can be used as a tool to facilitate a transparent decision-making
process. In addition, it provides a means of being proactive, enabling potential hazards to be
considered before a serious accident occurs.
FSA represents a fundamental change from what was previously a largely piecemeal and
reactive regulatory approach to one which is proactive, integrated, and above all based on risk
evaluation and management in a transparent and justifiable manner thereby encouraging
greater compliance with the maritime regulatory framework, in turn leading to improved safety
and environmental protection.
One area where FSA is already being applied is bulk carrier safety. In December 1998, the
Maritime Safety Committee, IMO's senior technical body, agreed to a framework setting out
project objectives, scope and application, namely:
to inform IMO's future decision-making regarding measures to improve the safety of bulk
carriers;
to apply FSA methodology to the safety of dry bulk shipping; and
to secure international collaboration and agreement.
FSA is highly technical and complex. But it does offer a way forward and a means of escaping
from the dilemma of the past in which action was too often put off until something went wrong with the result that the actions taken often owed more to public opinion and political
considerations than they did to technical merit.
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