Applying Fuzzy AHP Approach to Evaluate Key Operational Safety Elements for Exclusive Container Terminals of Kaohsiung Port in Taiwan

There are many accidents and risks occurred in many activities of operational systems at exclusive container terminals (ECTs) of Kaohsiung port in Taiwan. The container operators nowadays are facing great competitions on how reducing risks to manage those operational systems and activities at Kaohsiung port. Hence, the main purpose of this paper is to apply the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach to empirically study the risk identification on key operational safety elements (OSEs) for ECTs of Kaohsiung port in Taiwan. To facilitate the main issue for obtaining the preliminary OSEs, the four dimensions and sixteen initially important elements are derived from academic literature and interviewed with senior managers working at ECTs of Kaohsiung port. Subsequently, the proposed fuzzy AHP approach is used to measure relative weights for assessing those safety elements. Finally, the systematic appraisal approach is to perform the empirical survey via AHP questionnaires. The results of this study show that: (1) the aspect of most important risk is the man dimension; and (2) the top six critical OSEs are ‘operators’ mistakes and faults on operations,’ ‘communication misunderstanding,’ ‘execution of the job safety rules and regulations,’ ‘human carelessness and omissions,’ ‘carrying out the standard operating procedures (SOPs),’ and ‘not selecting inherently safety protection of machines and equipment,’ respectively. The finding of the empirical results showed that the top four risk factors all belonged to the man dimension. The safety and risk issues indicate that human error is associated with the majority of risk. It is suggested that the risk strategies on the man dimension can be focused on this aspect of safety operations of ECTs at Kaohsiung port. Key-Words: Risk; Safety; Container terminal; Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP)