Qualification of Formal Safety Assessment: An Exploratory Study

____________________________________________________________________ Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) is an approach adopted by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to support a systemic and structured assessment of proposals for new international regulations to improve shipping safety. Several case studies based on the approach have been conducted during the past few years. This paper addresses the issue of confidence in a FSA, as encountered during three case studies conducted by the authors over the years 1998 to 2002. A peer review process FSA qualification is introduced to support the consolidation of confidence in FSA results. Some qualification criteria are suggested. ____________________________________________________________________