Qualification of formal safety assessment: an exploratory study

Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) is an approach adopted by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to support a systemic and structured assessment of proposals for new international regulations to improve shipping safety. Several case studies based on the approach have been conducted during recent years. This paper addresses the issue of confidence in a FSA, as encountered during three case studies conducted by the authors over the years 1998-2002. A peer review process-FSA qualification-is introduced to support the consolidation of confidence in FSA results. Some qualification criteria are suggested. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.