Mental Models of Navigation Safety to Inform Risk Management Decisions: Case Study on the Houston Ship Channel
Publication: ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering
Volume 4, Issue 3
Abstract
The Houston Ship Channel (HSC) is one of the busiest waterway corridors in the United States. Since the channel’s expansion in 2005, concerns have arisen about design deficiencies in the HSC in the area of the Bayport Ship Channel (BSC), especially north of the turn at Five Mile Cut. A mental models expert elicitation exercise was conducted in order to identify safety concerns arising from these design deficiencies and provide qualitative data that can structure analysis of technical data like those from automatic identification system (AIS) databases, which can better connect possible design deficiencies to incident outcomes. The elicitation produced an influence diagram to enable later causal reasoning and Bayesian analysis for the HSC and BSC confluence and nearby areas on the HSC, and helped to prime a comprehensive study of the feasibility of safety and performance modifications on this reach of the HSC.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Ned Mitchell for providing the AIS data. Thank you also to George Shephard for assistance in figure reproduction. This work was funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Dredging Operations and Environmental Research (DOER) Program. Permission was granted by the USACE Chief of Engineers to publish this material. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the individual authors and not those of the U.S. Army or other sponsor organizations.
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ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering
Volume 4 • Issue 3 • September 2018
Copyright
©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 25, 2017
Accepted: Nov 1, 2017
Published online: May 26, 2018
Published in print: Sep 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Oct 26, 2018
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