8. Conclusion and future work
RM is an essential element playing most important role in
ensuring the effective operation and management of the sea ports
and terminals and as a part of the RM, the process of risk evaluation
is its main core. A new methodology proposed in this paper
is based on the FST and ER approach. In this methodology by using
a proposed generic risk evaluation model first, risks levels of the 22
individual risk factors for three Iranian ports were evaluated by
using the FST. In the second part the result of the evolutions for
three Iranian ports were synthesised by use of the ER approach
in order to derive the belief degrees of the same risk factors for
the mentioned ports. In the last part by feeding the relative
weights available from an illustrative example along with the belief
degrees calculated through the proposed methodology into
the IDS software, the overall scores of the three nominated ports
were calculated. In all the processes experts’ judgements were contributed
for the purpose of this paper.
Moreover the developed ER approach in this paper provided a
specific method to support MADM under uncertainties i.e. sources
of risks and uncertainties during PTOM. The ER approach was not
only capable of producing trustworthy results for MADM but also
was a flexible method to handle a wider range of the complex
MADM problems. Consequently as the ER approach is capable of
dealing with general MADM problems, it also is being applied to
decision problems in management and engineering, including
product and process design, risk and safety analysis and synthesis,
project management, marketing strategy analysis, quality and
environmental management.
Eventually the proposed methodology and model in the form of
a decision support can be implemented on any specific port during
the course of their RM cycle, auditing, port-to-port risk evaluations
and etc. This can help the ports’ and terminals’ managers and professionals,
e.g. port risk managers and port auditors to take corrective
and preventive actions at early stages to defeat a variety of
problems. As by the use of the FST and ER approach operational
risk factors of the nominated ports were evaluated, the same proposed
methodology and model can be utilised in future to evaluate
other categories of the risk factors associated in ports and terminals
e.g. business risks and organisational risks.