A model for oil spill scenarios from tanker collision accidents in the Northern Baltic Sea

Abstract

Oil spills from maritime activities can lead to very extensive damage to the marine environment and disrupt maritime ecosystem services. Shipping is an important activity in the Northern Baltic Sea, and with the complex and dynamic ice conditions present in this sea area, navigational accidents occur rather frequently. Recent risk analysis results indicate those oil spills are particularly likely in the event of collisions. In Finnish sea areas, the current wintertime response preparedness is designed to a level of 5000 tonnes of oil, whereas a state-of-the-art risk analysis conservatively estimates that spills up to 15000 tonnes are possible. Hence, there is a need to more accurately estimate oil spill scenarios in the Northern Baltic Sea, to assist the relevant authorities in planning the response fleet organization and its operations. An issue that has not received prior consideration in maritime waterway oil spill analysis is the dynamics of the oil outflow, i.e. how the oil outflow extent depends on time. Hence, this paper focuses on time-dependent oil spill scenarios from collision accidents possibly occurring to tankers operating in the Northern Baltic Sea. To estimate these, a Bayesian Network model is developed, integrating information about designs of typical tankers operating in this area, information about possible damage scenarios in collision accidents, and a state-of-the-art time-domain oil outflow model. The resulting model efficiently provides information about the possible amounts of oil spilled in the sea in different periods of time, thus contributing to enhanced oil spill risk assessment and response preparedness planning. Floris Goerlandt is a researcher at the Marine Technology Unit of Aalto University, School of Engineering, located in Espoo, Finland. Dr. Goerlandt has obtained his M.Sc. (Tech.) in Electromechanical Engineering with a minor in Marine Technology, at the University of Ghent in Belgium. He subsequently obtained a M.Sc. in Maritime Sciences in a joint program between the University of Antwerp and the University of Ghent, both in Belgium. He received a D.Sc. (Tech.) degree with distinction at the Aalto University, Finland on the topic “Risk analysis in maritime transportation: principles, frameworks and evaluation”. In between, he gained broad international experience and technical expertise by working as a hull approval engineer and as a ship surveyor on ships in operation and in construction shipyards, in the Benelux, Norway, Singapore and China. Dr. Goerlandt is an active researcher in the field of maritime risk and safety. He is a member of the ICES Working Group on Maritime risks in the Baltic Sea and the Applied Risk Management Specialty Group of the Society for Risk Analysis. He has served as delegate to the International Maritime Organization on multiple occasions, and serves as a Guest Editor for the Safety Science Special Issue on Risk Analysis Validation and Trust in Risk Management. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal and conference articles on topics related to accident analysis, waterway risk analysis, maritime safety management, tools for risk reduction in ship operations, and foundational issues in risk analysis.