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This research has evaluated the rules, guidelines and regulations related to ship vibrations. A historical failure data analysis is carried out to identify associated components, equipment and the areas of defects related to ship vibration problems. Ship Hull Vibration (SHV) is recognised as a major problem onboard ships and the propulsion system is identified as the major contributor to SHV. The current status of ship vibrations is reviewed and possible sources which create SHV are recognised. The major problems identified in this research are associated with risk modelling under circumstances where high levels of uncertainty exist. Following the identification of research needs, this PhD thesis has developed several analytical models for the application of Formal Safety Assessment (FSA). Such mode quently demonstrated by their corresponding case sti vith regard to application of FSA for SHV modelling. Firstly, in this research a generic SHV model is constructed for the purpose of risk estimation based on the identified hazards. The hazards include the SHV effects induced by ship design criteria, failure of components, and different patterns associated with the ship propulsion system (propeller system and machinery) as the major contributors to SHV. Then risk estimation bn is carried out utilising Evidential Reasoning (ER) and a fuzzy rule base. Secondly, ship selection (decision making) is investigated to to select the best ship design based on the risk estimation results of SHV. The risk estimation is carried out using ER, a fuzzy rule base and continuous fuzzy sets. The best ship design is selected by taking into account an ER-based utility ranking approach. Thirdly, combining discrete fuzzy sets and an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) risk estimation is conducted in terms of four risk parameters to select the major causes of component failure and then SHV.

This research is carried out to improve Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) in oil tanker operations in general, to extend and enhance in specific Cognitive Reliability and Error Analysis Method (CREAM), with the aim of reducing human error and thus subsequently preventing oil tanker spills. It is concentrated on oil tanker operations to address the limitation of availability of human reliability data in the maritime domain. The continual occurrence of oil tanker spills, which was substantiated with analysis of historical data of oil tanker incidents/accidents from 1970 to 2008, provides a judicious reason to conduct this research. The critical review of Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) and HRA results in the development of a conceptual framework of HRA facilitating FSA and incorporating Human Organisational Factors (HOF), which addresses the shortcomings of the generic HRA and FSA methodologies that exist independently in the management of oil tankers to prevent oil spills. The CREAM is reviewed due to its prominent use in identifying the root causes of human error. However, its inability of providing solutions to an incident/accident investigation and robust quantification of human reliability features stimulates the development of an advanced CREAM and a human reliability quantification model using a combined Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) and fuzzy logic approach in this research. In addition to facilitating identification of the root causes of human error, the advanced CREAM also provides the solutions to a quantification model, which enables the development of HRA data in the maritime domain. Furthermore, lack of CREAM studies on relationships among Common Performance Conditions (CPCs) is addressed by proposing a Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) model, which allows for a comprehensive understanding of relationships and interdependencies among the CPCs. The model could also be used toappreciate and assimilate the relationships and interdependencies among human factor variables involved in other transportation systems and industrial fields. Finally, the research is concluded with an integrated AHP and fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) model for determining the selection of an appropriate risk control option (RCO) while performing an incident/accident investigation by taking subjective judgments of decision makers into consideration. This research as a pioneer work in developing and applying advanced techniques to improve the generic CREAM in oil tanker operations establishes a foundation for future effort to improve the use of CREAM in other industries. The techniques developed can also be tailored to investigate and deal with an incident/accident effectively, resulting in the reduction of human error within the system management of any organisation.

Natural oil and gas has become one of mankind’s most fundamental resources. Hence, the performance of mobile offshore drilling units (MODUs) under various conditions has received considerable attention. MODUs are designed, constructed, operated, and managed for harsh geographical environments, thus they are unavoidably exposed to a wide range of uncertain threats and hazards. Ensuring the operational safety of an MODU’s system is often a complex problem. The system faces hazards from many different sources which dynamically threaten its integrity and can cause catastrophic consequences at time of failure. The main purpose of this thesis is to propose a methodology to improve the current procedures used in the risk assessment of MODUs. The aim is to prevent a critical event from occurring during drilling rather than on measures that mitigate the consequences once the undesirable event has occurred. A conceptual framework has been developed in this thesis to identify a range of hazards associated with normal operational activities and rank them in order to reduce the risks of the MODU. The proposed methodology provides a rational and systematic approach to an MODU’s risk assessment; a comprehensive model is suggested to take into consideration different influences of each hazard group (HG) of an offshore system. The Fuzzy- analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used to determine the weights of each HG. Fault tree analysis (FTA) is used to identify basic causes and their logical relationships leading to the undesired events and to calculate the probability of occurrence of each undesirable event in an MODU system. The BBN technique is used to express the causal relationships between variables in order to predict and update the occurrence probability of each undesirable event when any new evidence becomes available. Finally, an integrated Fuzzy multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) model based on the Fuzzy-AHP and a Fuzzy techniques for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) is developed to offer decision support that can help the Decision maker to set priorities for controlling the risk and improving the MODU’s safety level. All the developed models have been tested and demonstrated with case studies. An MODU’s drilling failure due to its operational scenario has been investigated and focus has been on the mud circulation system including the blowout preventer (BOP).

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Industry reports indicate that the number of security incidents happened in healthcare organisation is increasing. Lessons learned (i.e. the causes of a security incident and the recommendations intended to avoid any recurrence) from those security incidents should ideally inform information security management systems (ISMS). The sharing of the lessons learned is an essential activity in the “follow-up” phase of security incident response lifecycle, which has long been addressed but not given enough attention in academic and industry. This dissertation proposes a novel approach, the Generic Security Template (GST), aiming to feed back the lessons learned from real world security incidents to the ISMS. It adapts graphical Goal Structuring Notations (GSN), to present the lessons learned in a structured manner through mapping them to the security requirements of the ISMS. The suitability of the GST has been confirmed by demonstrating that instances of the GST can be produced from real world security incidents of different countries based on in-depth analysis of case studies. The usability of the GST has been evaluated using a series of empirical studies. The GST is empirically evaluated in terms of its given effectiveness in assisting the communication of the lessons learned from security incidents as compared to the traditional text based approach alone. The results show that the GST can help to improve the accuracy and reduce the mental efforts in assisting the identification of the lessons learned from security incidents and the results are statistically significant. The GST is further evaluated to determine whether users can apply the GST to structure insights derived from a specific security incident. The results show that students with a computer science background can create an instance of the GST. The acceptability of the GST is assessed in a healthcare organisation. Strengths and weaknesses are identified and the GST has been adjusted to fit into organisational needs. The GST is then further tested to examine its capability to feed back the security lessons to the ISMS. The results show that, by using the GST, lessons identified from security incidents from one healthcare organisation in a specific country can be transferred to another and can indeed inform the improvements of the ISMS. In summary, the GST provides a unified way to feed back the lessons learned to the ISMS. It fosters an environment where different stakeholders can speak the same language while exchanging the lessons learned from the security incidents around the world.

This thesis consists of three chapters. The first two chapters explore the effect of career concerns on communication by multiple experts. The third chapter addresses corporate governance as a double layered moral hazard. The first two chapters relate to a model where a decision maker acts over two periods on the advice of two imperfectly informed experts. Both experts are possibly biased, but in opposite directions. The decision maker can only rely on the experts' reports to determine a course of action, as he never observes the true state of the economy. I show that the experts may report in the opposite direction of their possible bias not only for reputational reasons, but also as a strategic response to the possibility of misreporting by their counterpart. This model also provides a new justification for conformity: an expert might send the same message as the other, not in order to look similar, but to distinguish herself. This is done by inviting comparison to the reliability of the other expert. I also show that a decision maker could discipline both experts to disclose their information by making one value the future more. Also, an expert might be made to tell the truth by being paired with another with high initial reputation. However, negative outcomes still persist, such as the possibility that unbiased experts end up misreporting their signals in order to disavow their perceived predisposition. In the third chapter I study self-dealing in organizations where investors are aware of the existence of different participants in a project. The model involves two-layers of moral hazard, where a manager acts simultaneously as an agent to an investor and as a principal to the employees of the firm. The manager's role is to determine the allocation of the uncontractible resources at his discretion. The optimal executive compensation offered by the investor takes into account the ease with which the employees exert effort and the trade-offs that arise in the process of committing resources.

Using the BHPS data, we have carried out three empirical studies to investigate household risky asset choice in the UK. In the first study we follow appropriate econometric procedures to identify household specific factors that can be observed to influence a household’s asset choice through parameters of their objective function, such as risk aversion and habit. In the second and third study, we use techniques to explain the specific influence of various factors rather than finding what lies behind the interactions observed. Specifically, the second study is about examining the effect of retirement on household risky asset choice and investigating whether this effect would be different when house ownership is taken into account. In fact, we do find that retirement has a positive effect on risky asset shares for house owners while it has no effect on non-house owners. In the third study, we carry out an empirical study on the impact of taxation on household risky asset choice, and we find in the short run paying income tax has negative impact on individual’s risky asset shares and in the long run paying capital gain tax has positive effect on individual’s risky asset shares. Hence a possible policy implication is to increase the income tax allowance in order to provide incentives for people on low incomes to save, and to save in a balanced portfolio of low and high risk assets.

The frequency and intensity of flooding has increased over the last few decades. The UK is not an exception, despite large amounts of money invested every year in flood risk management, flooding is a prevalent issue in the country causing millions of losses every year. In this thesis we contribute to debate on the economic valuation of flood risk in the UK from a household perspective using a non-market valuation approach from the housing market. In the first chapter we investigate the capitalisation of flood risk in property prices by means of a meta-analysis. In the second and third chapters we use a repeatsales specification of a hedonic model to investigate the capitalisation of flood defences and the effect of flooding in the price of properties in England. The results suggest that the current benefit estimates used by the UK Government to determine the allocation of resources to flood relief projects results in a misallocation of resources. We highlight the importance of rethinking the strategy for flood risk management in the UK. Our results provide a sound economic basis to guide the allocation of resources for flood alleviation strategies in a socially efficient way.

The search to find new ways of improving performance in the construction industry led to the introduction of collaborative working and, after fifteen years the question is has this approach delivered the expected improvements. The management of collaborative relationships is often underpinned by trust as a governance mechanism. However, owing to the practical problems of operating in the public sector combined, with the natural disposition of human behavior, the risk of opportunism and exploitation remains, requiring additional governance mechanisms to be put in place. However these mechanisms can only be realised if there is a position of strong buyer power. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to consider what impact buyer / supplier power has on collaboration and the consequent benefits delivered. Research has been carried out on a case study involving four projects from the Birmingham Construction Partnership using interviews and a questionnaire. It was found that levels of collaboration were not affected by marginal differences in power, but rather by agency factors and trust. However, the conclusion drawn is that the buyer must retain a strong position of power in order to ensure the buyer obtains a good apportionment of value generated by collaboration.