A Review of Risk Analysis Research for the Operations of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Risk analysis for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) is essential to assist decision making for safer operations. This study aims to provide a systematic review of risk analysis research to enhance the safety performance of AUVs. Forty-two domain articles were retrieved and analyzed. Critical risk factors and causal relationships of AUV operations were identified. A comparative analysis of evolving methods and models was performed by categorizing them as qualitative, semi-quantitative, and quantitative. Future trends of research in this field were also outlined. The study observes that as AUV technologies gradually mature, environmental factors, human factors, and their interactive impacts are gathering more attention. Quantitative risk analysis methods have recently played a key role in improving the accuracy and handling the uncertainties of risk estimation. The study recommends devoting efforts to dynamic risk analysis, addressing limited historical data, intelligent risk analysis, and multi-vehicles risk analysis for future works. This study is expected to help AUV stakeholders gain comprehensive insights into fundamental concepts and evolving methods for risk analysis of AUVs. At the same time, it is expected to highlight future directions to bridge existing gaps.