Priority Assessment of Key Factors of IMO-MSC/Circular.834 for Ship Engine Room Safety and Efficiency Based on Human Aspects

Abstract

International Maritime Organization (IMO) has published technical circular (MSC/Circular. 834) including nonmandatory guidelines with five main criteria about engine room layout, design, and arrangement. The purpose of this study is to present the most important priority criteria of seafarers about engine room design according to the criteria from IMO MSC/Circular.834 guidelines. Since there are no obligations, the priority and importance of these criteria are not clearly emphasized. Therefore, the determination of seafarers’ priorities for arrangement in terms of safety and efficiency become important to make decision. For this, fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique, which is one of the most used fuzzy Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM)methods is employed. Maritime transportation, known for oldest and widespread transportation around the world, with 11 billion tons weight and 80% rate of world trade volume (UNCTAD 2019). Maritime transportation has many components and one of the most important and effective parts of these components are ships and seafarers. Because of the difficulty of ship conditions, ships should be present optimum working conditions for seafarers in order to achieve effective and safe operations on board. At the present time, there are previous studies about the difficulty of working studies on board. It is a scientific and cultural fact that seafarers are under higher risk of working conditions comparing to other jobs (Bloor et al. 2000; Havold 2005; Hetherington et al. 2006; Mallam et al. 2015). Due to this reason, International Maritime Organization (IMO) has made various regulations for years in order to improve seafarers’ safety and efficiency on board. One of the goals of these regulations is to design optimum working conditions on board for seafarers. Based on complex structure and having various danger conditions, engine room design is considerable to ensure safety and efficiency for engine room department seafarers.