Risk Analysis of Dynamic Positioning (DP) System in Different Innovative Application.

Dynamic Positioning (DP) system has been around for many years but major attention to this technology was given by the oil and gas sector. When the hydrocarbon exploration was moving into deeper waters with a harsh environment where position keeping of vessel was more important than ever. Dynamic positioning emerged as a great solution for position keeping and heading of vessels. Many approaches and methods have been developed in managing the risks affiliated with this emerging technology. A rapid increase of DP system application is not only in the oil and gas sector but in other sectors including the aquaculture industry. The biggest challenge in DP application is how to ensure its safe operation in an emergency or critical situation. There are two important factors that may impact DP safety, including the endurance of a DP in contradiction of drift-off from the required position and its ability to recover to the required position from loss of position. Data analysis on DP incident data from IMCA shows that the occurrence of loss of position in DP vessel operation is not an uncommon event. This master´s thesis focus on risk analysis of DP system in different innovative applications. Failure modes and effects analysis has been used to investigate the risks from a qualitative point of view. While statistical methods have been used to predict the probability of DP system failures using IMCA incident data for nine years (2010-2018). While applying regression analysis for risk analysis, challenges like the low power of data have been addressed. Based on the results of risk analysis from FMEA and statistical methods, the thesis also discusses practices and measures for safe operations of DP system in aquaculture