Safety Assessment of Inshore Towing Operations for Heavy Cargo

To evaluate and compare the safety level of alternative plans prepared for a towing activity that bears various risks, a novel assessment framework is worked out for inshore towing operations for heavy cargo. The assessment framework mainly includes a set of criteria with hierarchical structure drawn from towing plans and evidential reasoning theory as data aggregation approach. Case study shows that the framework is rational and applicable in the safety assessment of inshore towing operations.