Risk prioritization in a core preparation experiment using fuzzy VIKOR integrated with Shannon entropy method

Accident rates in academic laboratories are increasing rapidly day to day. The incorporation of complex activities with the inclusion of modern technologies and human behavior during experiments often makes it difficult to manage health and safety risks. Failure modes and effect analysis (FMEA) is widely used risk assessment technique that consider (03) risk parameters which include severity (S), occurrence (O), and detection (D), and calculate a risk priority number (R.P.N), which facilitates in failure modes ranking. However, there are some shortcomings associated with this method. This study aims to propose a framework for prioritizing the health and safety risks (failure modes) in an experiment using a widely used Multi-criteria decision-making method, i.e., Fuzzy VIKOR supported by criteria objective weights determined using the Shannon entropy concept. The fuzzy VIKOR method is employed to rank the failure modes based on the maxi group utility and the minimum individual regret. In this study, an experiment related to preparing rock core samples is taken as an example for implementing the proposed technique. Core sample preparation is one of the most common and dangerous experiments in the petroleum industry. The performance of the experiment allows rock sample preparation of desired shape and size to be tested for its hydrocarbon producing potential. The final results indicate that applying the proposed method in a fuzzy environment can efficiently prioritize the experiment's health and safety risks, which is further considered for the implementation of control measure prioritization. The proposed approach can be applied to other experiments with the same or different domains.