A three-step methodology to complement underreporting maritime accident records

Abstract The underreporting issue on shipping accident data has plagued the researchers focused on maritime safety analysis for many years. For improving the quality of shipping accident records, this study proposes a novel methodology comprising three steps to complement the underreported maritime accident records. The first step is to investigate the underreporting rates under various conditions through questionnaire survey. Based on the survey results, the second step is to build a Cluster-Specific Random Effects (CSRE) model to estimate the underreporting rates under various scenarios. Then, the third step is to replicate the underreported accident records using the Monte Carlo simulation technique. Model results show that the occurrence probability of missing accident records involving liquid cargo ships is lower than other ship categories while fishing ships are more likely to have a higher underreporting rate. Non-serious accidents are more likely to be underreported than serious accidents. The case study confirms the effectiveness of the proposed three-step method for complementing the maritime accident databases suffering underreporting problems.