Reliability estimation of maritime transportation: A study of two fuzzy reliability models

Abstract

The progressive increase in marine vessel transportation, in recent years, is often a cause of congestion at sea and main cause of highly irregular vessel's travel time. This greatly affects scheduling of the facilities at the harbor and also related logistics. As a result, the reliability value of any marine vessel becomes a crucial factor in associated decision making. Modeling the uncertainty in estimation of marine vessel reliability has been a research interest for quite some time now. This paper investigates the problem in a different sense and tries to model the uncertainties using expert's opinions and their imprecise responses. Marine vessel transportation reliability is viewed in an entirely different perspective and framework. This paper initially proposed a transportation reliability estimation procedure considering 12 decision variables divided into three stages. Two realistic models based on fuzzy sets are subsequently developed; with two scenarios for the first model. The first model utilizes fuzzy arithmetic; whereas the second one is based on rule bases. The paper demonstrates how information based on experience of the experts on marine vessels could be used to obtain its reliability value. Both the models would be helpful where imprecision is an intrinsic attribute of the accessible data in case of sea going vessels. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.