Improving performance evaluation of health, safety and environment management system by combining fuzzy cognitive maps and relative degree analysis

• FCM is used to explore the direct and indirect effects of HSE-MS elements and system sub-performance.
• Causal ranks of HSE-MS elements and system performance indicators could be provided as a decision support.
• RDA is employed to amend the conflicting weight distribution results of FCM.
• The evaluation results illustrate HSE-MS performance evaluation.

The performance evaluation of health, safety and environment management system (HSE-MS) is considered to be an effective way to eliminate out dated measures and help managers adopt proper rectification measures. The objective of this paper is to design a weight distribution model for HSE-MS performance evaluation, the importance of which stems from the current lack of integrated approaches for interpreting and ranking HSE-MS performance evaluation elements. Initially, Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) is adopted to illustrate the direct and indirect effects of HSE-MS elements on system performance indicators, and the results of FCM are used to develop leading factors helpful for decision making in an intensive management system. Then, the weight distribution from FCM is amended by Relative Degree Analysis (RDA), the aim of which is to combine the advantages of quantitative and qualitative knowledge-driven methods. Finally, the level of HSE-MS performance is obtained and analyzed. The whole performance evaluation framework highlights the potential correlations of evaluation elements as well as expert opinions, which will improve the reasonability of the HSE-MS performance evaluation.