In recent years, many studies explored the ship safety enhancement through the application of monitoring systems. Despite their indisputable benefit, the growing number of independent safety and control systems is also increasing the amount of information that masters and officers have to deal with. In order to reduce human error occurrence, decision-making techniques allow developing effective onboard Decision Support Systems (DSSs), capable to assess and measure objectively the overall ship safety during navigation as well as during an emergency. In the present work, the fuzzy analytical hierarchical process is applied to define the weights of importance of a large number of criteria and sub-criteria composing a risk-based framework. The framework is devoted to onboard application as a part of DSS in order to quantify the ship safety level during navigation and emergencies. The structure of the framework has been discussed with a small pool of masters from major shipping companies, while the weights of importance have been evaluated on the base of a large group of masters and officers. The analysis, carried out for different ship types, provides a portrait of the seafarers’ safety perception, being a solid base for further development of onboard DSSs.
