Safety regulation is one of the most important aspects of maritime transport safety. Since the end of the 20th century, new risk-based normative approaches are developed in addition to the traditional - determinist and prescriptive - safety regulatory configuration. This work focuses on the potential benefits of risk assessment techniques to safety regulations. The methodological work of production and organization of theoretical concepts and industrial state-of-the-art related to the "non traditional" regulatory configuration makes it possible to formalize the use of risk assessment techniques and to propose aspects influencing technique choice. Two risk assessment methods were improved - related to (i) Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) for use in rule-making process, and to (ii) alternative designs for fire safety to be used when ship design does not complied with prescriptive requirements - and applied, respectively to bulkcarrier safety and to a passenger vessel large public space. Through this work, we emphasised the potential use of the risk assessment within the regulatory framework, and highlighted the general outlines structuring these approaches.
