Application of AHP to fire safety based decision making of a passenger ship

Ship fire safety is increasingly attracting attention from both researchers and engineers. This paper develops an approach to integrate ship fire safety assessment and decision-making using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. The approach can be used to help reduce the probability of fire occurrence and severity of possible consequences during the operational phase of a passenger ship. It utilises the AHP theory to rank the fire events and further integrates the available control options (to minimise these fires) within the analysis. A test case on the operation of a passenger ship is used to demonstrate the approach.