Decision-making principle in prioritizing the implementation of safety measures: Study on offshore safety and road traffic safety.

Abstract

Safety management objective is to prevent accidents to occur, thus reducing harm to people as well as preventing damage to environment and assets. To reduce harm, safety measures need to be implemented. In prioritizing which safety measures to be implemented, different industries are using different decision-making principle, depending on the uncertainties being faced and the strength of background knowledge. In this thesis we discuss the decision-making principle used in prioritizing the implementation of safety measures in offshore petroleum industry and transportation industry.

A recent study by Abrahamsen and Abrahamsen (2015) suggested that it can be appropriate to adopt ALARP principle as a general principle in safety management if the layered approach is adopted. We discuss that this approach can be applied in issues related to offshore safety and road traffic safety, which have different characteristic and different context. Therefore, we conclude that the ALARP with layered approach can be applied as general decision-making principle in safety management.