Subjective operational reliability assessment of maritime transportation system

System reliability assessment is one of the major acts in the operation and maintenance of every industrial and service sector, which also holds true for maritime transportation system. The complexity of the maritime transportation system is a prime obstacle in the evaluation of the operational reliability of the system; mainly due to the fact that statistical data on the important parameters and variables is scarce. This makes the application of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic a viable option to overcome the data problem with regards to imprecision or vagueness in parameters and variables values. In this paper, the different decisive factors, affecting maritime transportation systems, are modeled in the form of linguistic variables. Techniques such as aggregation, mapping of fuzzy sets using distance measure and fuzzy logic rule base are used to arrive at subjective operational reliability value. The complete procedure is demonstrated with an example.

► The paper presents a methodology of maritime transportation system reliability evaluation by the application of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic techniques. ► Initially, various parameters/ factors affecting the operational reliability are identified and then, architecture for subjective operational reliability model is proposed. ► Decisive criteria and the operational reliability output are linked via fuzzy logic rule bases. ► The proposed model may be regarded as a first unique subjective model in the field of maritime transportation system reliability. ► Issues related to subjective nature of reliability modeling parameters of maritime transportation system from source to destination harbor were not considered before.