Research Information System
19th Annual General Assembly (AGA) of the International-Association-of-Maritime-Universities (IAMU), Barcelona, Spain, 17 - 19 October 2018, pp.425-433
City of Izmir as the third largest city of Turkey, is the opening gate of Anatolia to the world through Aegean Sea. The city with its great volume of cargo capacity plays crucial role both in international and domestic sea trade. The Port of Alsancak located at the inner part of the bay is the largest seaport of Aegean Region in terms of annual loading capacity. The main objective of this research is to find the root-causes of accidents that have resulted in the groundings in Bay of Izmir. To do this, the Root Cause Analysis methodology was carried out on the accidental data provided by Turkish Main Search and Rescue Coordination Center (TMSRCC). Between 2001 and 2016, a total of 24 ships grounded at the entrance of Yenikale due to shallow water conditions, which is regarded as the riskiest point in terms of groundings. In this study, the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) method which is the one of the most preferred root cause analysis methods was used. As a result, it was found that equipment failures and geographical factors are the main reasons of grounding accidents in Bay of Izmir. In order to eliminate these causes, necessary precautions have been offered and suggestions for further studies have been made.