Ship accident consequences and contributing factors analyses using ship accident investigation reports

Abstract

Ship accident consequences, including life loss, property/cargo damage, and environment pollution, could be caused by various factors. This study aims to quantitatively analyze the association between ship accident consequences and related contributing factors based on real ship accident investigation reports. We propose a two-step research methodology. In the first step, we standardize the necessary contributing factor–related information that is extracted from the ship accident investigation reports. In the second step, three statistical analysis methods, including nonparametric statistics of Kendall’s tau coefficient, Cramér’s V analysis and Kruskal–Wallis test, are carried out to figure out the import contributing factors with respect to ship accident consequences. The proposed methodology has been assessed based on 477 ship accident reports. Some insightful findings are obtained: (1) vessel speed is the most significant factor contributing to fatality and injury of collision accidents, whereas no remarkable relationship holds for grounding accidents; (2) for collision accidents, crew number shows a strong association with injury and fatality, but it exhibits weak linkages to other consequences of ship damage, cargo damage and oil spill; and (3) the consequence of oil spill is strongly related to collision position, especially in head-on and crossing collisions.