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Improving safety of DP operations: learning from accidents and incidents during offshore loading operations

  • Original Article
  • Published:
EURO Journal on Decision Processes

Abstract

The risk caused by DP vessels in offshore marine operations is not negligible, due to wide applications of DP vessels in complex marine operations, and the sharp increase of DP vessel population. The DP accidents/incidents on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) that have occurred after 2000 indicate a need for improving safety of DP operations, which calls for new risk reduction measures. The focus of this paper is particularly on the offshore loading operations with DP shuttle tanker in offloading from floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels on the NCS, but the results may be relevant also for other types of DP vessels in offshore oil and gas operations. In the paper, Man, Technology and Organization (MTO) analysis is applied to investigate the cause and barrier failures of nine reported accidents/incidents occurring over a 16-year period (2000–2015). MTO is based on three methods, including structured analysis by use of an event- and cause-diagram, change analysis by describing how events have deviated from earlier events or common practice, and barrier analysis by identifying technological and administrative barriers which have failed or are missing. The results are categorized into technical failures, human failures, organizational failures, as well as a combination of failures. The main finding is that the majority of the accidents are caused by the combination of technical, human and organizational failures. Critical root causes, results of change analysis and barrier analysis, and combination of failures are focused in the discussion. Recommendations of potential safety improvements are made on the aspects of the assessment of the actual system function, barrier management for marine systems, risk information to support different decision-makings, and the development of an on-line risk monitoring and decision supporting system.

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(Adopted from Rasmussen (1997)

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Notes

  1. BLOM PMS system is a position monitoring system, which is installed on shuttle tankers. It has a position data log, e.g., tanker position and speed.

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Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the permission from PSA to utilize information in the nine incident investigation reports in an anonymous manner; these nine reports are the basis of the analysis. Ingrid Bower Utne acknowledges the support from the research project, Design to Verification of Control Systems for Safety and Energy Efficient Vessel with Hybrid Power Plant (D2V), with the Research Council of Norway as the main sponsor. NFR:210670/070, 223254/F50. Moreover, two anonymous reviewers are acknowledged for their valuable comments to an earlier version of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marine Technology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway

    Yining Dong, Jan Erik Vinnem & Ingrid Bouwer Utne

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  1. Yining Dong
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  2. Jan Erik Vinnem
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  3. Ingrid Bouwer Utne
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Correspondence to Yining Dong.

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Dong, Y., Vinnem, J.E. & Utne, I.B. Improving safety of DP operations: learning from accidents and incidents during offshore loading operations. EURO J Decis Process 5, 5–40 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40070-017-0072-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40070-017-0072-1

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