The Research On The Problem Of Non-SMS Shipping Company Safety Management

Shipping company as a subject of liability for waterborne transportation safety is one of the most important sources of waterborne transportation safety administration. In China, only a limited number of shipping companies have their own safety management system(SMS). The rest are the so-called "non-SMS company" that have no SMS.Compared to the SMS company, non-SMS company,often associated with increased safety management weaknesses and more frequently-occurring ship accidents, have become the focal points and difficult-to-tackle targets in waterborne transportation safety administration.This thesis use a combination of approaches, including systemic, theoretical and mathematical analysis, case study, and countermeasure proposal, to straighten out current laws and regulations relating to corporate safety management and to investigate safety management situations of non-SMS company in selected regions. Its aim is to identify and analyse these companies' inherent problems, e.g. weak company-wide safety consciousness, lame management system, low staff quality, and insufficient safety input, and those that currently exist in non-SMS company safety administration,e.g. incomplete legal and regulatory system, inadequate supervision forces, and lack of communication among supervision authorities. Considering the fact that information concerning non-SMS company is usually uniform, incomplete and indeterminate, and after making a thorough analysis of the factors affecting safety management of non-SMS company and determining the evaluation indicators and their corresponding weights, this thesis use a multi-index comprehensive uncertainty evaluation method based on the D-S evidence theory to create an evaluation model and conduct a safety management evaluation of selected non-SMS companies; It then proposes some countermeasures that would help to strengthen non-SMS companies' safety management from the perspectives of both the company itself and supervision authority:on the one hand, these companies need to heighten their own safety consciousness, put a well-functioning safety management system and carry out safety management evaluation.on the other hand, supervision authorities should be in a position to exercise supervision to non-SMS companies actively push forward work safety standardization development among non-SMS companies, create a working mechanism enabling them to sharing information and executing joint supervision actions, provide more training to non-SMS company personnel, make use of modernized tools for delivering information services, give full play to the role of industry associations, and advocate a classification management system among non-SMS companies. The above-mentioned countermeasure proposals, which are conducive to effectively regulating safety management activities of these companies while improving supervision efficiency of the government, will be of great significance to stabilizing the overall safety situation of waterborne transportation.