Improvements FSA as a Prerequisite for Risk-Based GBS

The international shipping industry has begun to move from a reactive to a proactive approach to safety through what is known as “Formal Safety Assessment”(FSA). The recent “Goal Based Standards” (GBS) approach is focused towards being another proactive instrument. Much of the recent debate at IMO is whether the GBS should be “Risk-Based,” that is, whether it should use the full arsenal of risk-related methodologies that are already developed which includes FSA. The purpose of this paper is to outline possible improvements in the FSA process so that Risk-Based GBS can proceed smoothly without problems. To that end, a critical review of the FSA methodology is carried out with proposals on ways to improve it. All steps of the FSA approach are studied to identify possible pitfalls and/or other deficiencies. At this point some proposals are made to alleviate such deficiencies, with a view to achieve a clearer and more objective approach.