Risk Assessment for Cruise Ship Navigation Safety of Inland Waterway Based on Evidential Reasoning

Abstract

A risk assessment model based on the D-S evidence theory is proposed to solve problems concerning the security risks of tourism in inland waterways. First, we explain the risk assessment index system and describe the steps for the inland waterway cruise ship navigation safety assessment. Second, we evaluate all indicators at the bottom level and transform them into the distribution of belief items. Finally, we apply the evidential reasoning (ER) approach to merge the belief structure information with the index level, in order to obtain the evaluation indicators. Subsequently, it would be possible for us to obtain the assessment results of the goal level in a comparable way. The evaluation results are presented through a belief assignment form, but it is necessary to transform the distribution information into crisp values for comparison purposes, by using a comprehensive evaluation function. Furthermore, we also conducted a case study on the Lijiaxia reservoir, to present and validate the proposed model and the corresponding methods. The results show that the safety evaluation score of the investigated waterway is 3.06, a value that can be considered to be of an intermediate level. Thus, it can be seen that the risk grade generated from the proposed model tends to be consistent with the real safety state of the waterway.