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1 INTRODUCTION
Maritime activities such as shipping are an essential
component of the global economy, and represent a
significant economic sector in many coastal countries
(UNCTAD, 2018). While maritime transportation
provides economic and social opportunities, it also
carries inherent risks to human life, the environment,
End-user and Stakeholder Views on Selected Risk
Assessment Tools for Marine Oil Spill Preparedness and
Response, Including Future Research and Development
Needs
F. Goerlandt
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM), Helsinki, Finland
A
alto University, Marine Technology, Aalto, Finland
V. Laine
Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM), Helsinki, Finland
A
alto University, Marine Technology, Aalto, Finland
E. Bal Beşikçi
World Maritime University, Malmö, Sweden
Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey
M. Baldauf
World Maritime University, Malmö, Sweden
Hochschule Wismar, Warnemünde, Germany
M.A. Al-Quhali
World Maritime University, Malmö, Sweden
Y. Koldenhof
M
aritime Research Institute Netherlands, Wageningen, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT: Risks in the maritime domain have various sources, of which the transportation of oil and other
noxious products is one of key concern to industry and public stakeholders. Operational or accidental releases
of oil or other pollutants from ships or offshore facilities into the marine environment can have disastrous
effects on the marine ecosystems, while also leading to very significant economical losses. Therefore, national
states have implemented various mechanisms for preventing and responding to pollution in the maritime
domain, with activities which are often embedded in regional cooperation frameworks clustered around certain
sea areas. To support collaborative, harmonized, and risk-informed oil spill Pollution Preparedness and
Response (PPR) planning for response authorities, the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission
(HELCOM), together with its research partners, and with extensive end-user and stakeholder inputs, have
developed the OpenRisk Toolbox. This toolbox includes several risk assessment tools and techniques, which
can assist in providing answers to a range of PPR risk management questions in a range of organizational
contexts. To better understand and ensure the applicability and usefulness of the OpenRisk Toolbox, a
workshop was organized where some of these tools were tested. Selected end user and stakeholder views on
the perceived usefulness of the tools were collected and analyzed. Another workshop focused on further
development needs to implement the tools in organizational practices. This paper first presents the OpenRisk
Toolbox, then describes the settings of the workshops. Finally, a summary of the end-user and stakeholder
views on the tested tools, and on future development needs, is given.
http://www.transnav.eu
the International Journal
on Marine Navigation
and Safety of Sea Transportation
Volume 13
Number 1
March 2019
DOI: 10.12716/1001.13.01.22
214
and economic interests (HELCOM, 2018). One of the
significant risks concerns marine pollution, of which
oil spills have been a significant concern for coastal
communities already for a long time. Spills can have
detrimental effects to marine ecosystems (Teal and
Howarth, 1984), can disrupt marine-related economic
activities such as fisheries and coastal tourism (Garza-
Gil et al., 2006), and have important socio-economic
implications for local coastal communities (Gill et al.,
2011).
Globally, volumes of spilled oil have seen a steady
decrease over the last decades (ITOPF, 2017).
Nevertheless, accidental and operational spills do still
occur, even large ones. Hence, the need for oil
Pollution Preparedness and Response (PPR) activities,
both at sea and on-shore, is undisputed, and many
coastal countries dedicate significant resources to
maintaining an oil response fleet (HELCOM, 2018).
Given the possible trans-national nature of marine
spills, several regional agreements have been agreed
upon and implemented, to facilitate collaboration in
pollution preparedness and response. These include,
for instance, the Helsinki Convention in the Baltic Sea,
the Bonn Agreement in the North Sea, and the
Bucharest Convention in the Black Sea.
To facilitate the decision-making processes for PPR
planning, risk assessment has been applied in several
European sea areas, e.g. the Baltic Sea area (COWI,
2011), the North Sea (Bonn Agreement, 2014), and the
Mediterranean (MEDESS-4MS, 2018). Also in other
sea areas, risk analysis methods have been developed
and/or applied to support pollution preparedness and
response. See also e.g. Ösbaş (2013) for a review of
maritime risk assessment methods.
Despite this progress, several European PPR
authorities identified a gap in the tools available for
risk management, and concerns were raised e.g.
related to the lack of transparency of certain risk
analysis methods, the use of proprietary methods,
and the lack of comparability between results of
different methods. Overall, a need was voiced to
develop an open access toolbox for PPR risk analysis,
with additional guidance on suitable processes to
implement this into organizational processes
(OpenRisk, 2018). Responding to this need, the Baltic
Marine Environment Protection Commission
(Helsinki Commission, HELCOM) initiated a project
to develop a freely available toolbox for risk
assessment of maritime activities, known as the
OpenRisk Toolbox. While the tools included in this
toolbox currently focus exclusively on accidental oil
spill risks related to maritime transportation, the
toolbox is envisaged to be open, so other methods can
be included to address risks from other maritime or
offshore activities.
In the academic literature on risk analysis, there
has been a recent focus on the validation of risk
analysis methods, and the trust in the risk
management activities (Goerlandt et al., 2017). One
aspect of this concerns pragmatic validity, i.e. the
extent to which the method succeeds in achieving
what it intends to achieve. In case of risk analysis
methods, pragmatic validity involves very practical
issues like whether end-users find the method useful
and whether they understand its underlying basis.
Thus, testing risk analysis tools with end users and
stakeholders, and obtaining feedback from them
about their usefulness, is an important part of
effective risk management. It is also important to
consider what more is needed for risk establishing
effective risk management.
Considering this, the aims of this paper are two-
fold. First, a high-level overview of the OpenRisk
Toolbox is given, focusing on which risk management
questions the different tools address. Second, results
are presented of end-user and stakeholder workshops
aimed at evaluating selected methods of the
OpenRisk Toolbox, and on future research and
development needs.
The OpenRisk Toolbox is introduced in Section 2.
The workshops and the and methods used to gather
end-user feedback on the methods and future needs,
are described in Section 3. Results of this work are
shown in Section 4, and a discussion is given in
Section 5. Section 6 concludes.
2 OPENRISK TOOLBOX: AN OVERVIEW
Table 1 provides an overview of the tools included in
the OpenRisk Toolbox, with details about each
methods given in (OpenRisk, 2018).
Table 1. OpenRisk Toolbox: tools included
_______________________________________________
Nr. Tool name Reference
_______________________________________________
1 AISyRisk (Kystverket,
2018)
2 MarinRisk (Koldenhof et al.,
2010)
3 Delphi Method (Zaloom and
Subhedar, 2008)
4 RiskData Hub (EC, 2016)
5 IALA Waterway Risk Assessment (IALA, 2017)
Programme (IWRAP Mk II)
6 Ports and Waterways Safety (USCG, 2018)
Assessment (PAWSA)
7 Maritime Event Risk Classification (ARMS-WG,
Method (ERC-M) 2010)
8 Accidental Damage and Spill (Tabri et al.,
2018)
Assessment Model for Collision and
Grounding (ADSAM-C/G)
9 SeaTrack Web (Liungman and
Mattson, 2011)
10 Next Generation SmartResponse (Aps et al. 2016)
Web
11 Response System Planning (BSEE, 2018)
Calculators (ERSP, EBSP, EDSP)
12 BowTie Method (CGE RMS, 2017)
13 Functional Resonance Analysis (Hollnagel, 2012)
(FRAM)
14 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) (ARPEL, 2017)
15 Spatial Bayesian Oil Spill Risk Tool (Helle et al.,
(SBOSRT) 2016)
16 Integrated Strategic Risk Analysis (COWI, 2011)
Method (ISRAM)
17 Strength of Evidence Assessment (Goerlandt and
Schemes (SoE) Reniers, 2016)
18 Risk Matrices and Probability- (Goerlandt and
Consequence Diagrams (RM-PCDS) Reniers, 2016)
19 As Low as Reasonable Practicable (Melchers, 2001)
Principle (ALARP)
20 Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) (Boardman, 2006)
_______________________________________________
215
Some tools, such as AISyRisk and MARINRisk, are
suited to detect trends in maritime risks, and hence
should be used relatively frequently to identify a need
for more in-depth risk analysis and risk treatment.
Other tools, such as the Delphi method, are aimed to
identify and assess the importance of new and
emerging risks in the maritime transportation system,
e.g. the use of new fuel types, or new technological
systems such as unmanned vessels. Such tools are
expected to be used less frequently, but are also
aimed to identify a need for further risk analysis or
risk treatment.
Other tools can be used together to support
practical response planning and fleet organization.
The Event Risk Classification Method (ERC-M) or the
IALA Waterway Risk Assessment Programme
(IWRAP Mk II) can be used to gain understanding of
the likely accident scenarios in the maritime system.
Using these scenarios, the Accidental Damage and
Spill Assessment Models for Collision and Grounding
(ADSAM-C/G) can provide insight in the likely spill
amounts in collision and grounding accidents.
Combining this information in the SeaTrack Web tool
provides information about the fate and transport of
the released oil, i.e. where the oil drifts to and how it
would affect the shorelines. The Next-Generation
Smart Response Web (NG-SRW) provides similar
information, with additional information about
ecosystem values and shoreline sensitivity. The
Response System Planning Calculators (ERSP, EBSP,
EDSP) aim to assess how much oil the response
system can recover. Other tools, such as the BowTie
method or the Functional Resonance Analysis Method
(FRAM) can provide information about the causes,
contributing factors, or critical system functions
related to the spill occurrence or the response system
performance.
Finally, some tools can be used to support long-
term strategic investment decisions, for instance
related to the number of response vessels required in
different sea areas, or the need for new equipment.
The integrated risk analysis methods (ISRAM) and
Spatial Bayesian Oil Spill Risk Tool (SBOSRT) can be
used for that.
In all decision contexts, the Strength of Evidence
assessment tools can be used to provide information
about how good the evidence underlying the risk
analysis is. Risk analysis results can be visualized in
Risk Matrices (RMs) or Probability-Consequence
Diagrams (PCDs), e.g. for comparing risks in different
sea areas. The As Low As Reasonably Practicable
(ALARP) and Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) can guide
risk evaluation and provide decision support for the
risk treatment phase.
The tools are aimed to cover a set of typical risk
management questions in a pollution preparedness
and response context, over different time scales and in
different decision-making contexts. Table 2 lists the
risk management questions which the different tools
included in the OpenRisk Toolbox aim to help
answering.
Table 2. OpenRisk Toolbox: risk management questions
_______________________________________________
Nr. Risk management questions
_______________________________________________
1 - Where are the historic accident risks in the sea area?
- How do the risks develop over time?
2 - Where are the historic accident risks in the sea area?
- How do the risks develop over time?
3 - What kinds of future hazards should be considered?
- What are the associated risk levels?
4 - Where are the historic accident risks in the sea area?
- How do the risks develop over time?
5 - What is the accident likelihood in different sea areas?
- What accident scenarios are likely?
- What effect do risk control options have on risk
level?
6 - How important are various waterway factors on the
risk?
- What effect do risk control options have on risk
level?
7 - What kinds of hazards occur in the sea area?
- What is the risk level in different sea areas?
- What accident scenarios are likely?
- Which are contributing factors to the event
occurrence?
8 - What size of oil spills can occur in collisions?
- What size of oil spills can occur in groundings?
9 - Where does the oil drift to in the sea area?
10 - What size of oil spills can occur in collisions?
- What size of oil spills can occur in groundings?
- Where does the oil drift to in the sea area?
- What are consequences to the ecosystem?
- What are consequences for human use of marine
space?
11 - How much oil can the response system recover?
- How much oil can the response system burn?
- How much oil can the response system disperse?
12 - Which factors contribute to the event occurrence?
- Which factors contribute to the event consequence?
- What is the effectiveness of different risk controls?
13 - Which system functions are responsible for the
variation in the system performance?
14 - How important are different system indicators in
regards event occurrence and/or consequences?
- What is the performance of different system
elements
compared to target levels?
15 - What are the oil spill risks in the sea area?
- What is the extent of ecological damage in different
oil spill risk scenarios?
16 - What are the oil spill risks in the sea area?
- What size of spills can occur?
- Where does the oil drift to in the sea area?
- What are the ecosystem and human use
consequences?
- What effect do different risk control options have on
the risk level?
17 - How much can the risk analysis results be relied on?
18 - How do the risks compare to one another?
19 - Are the risks acceptable?
- Should further risks control options be
implemented?
20 - How cost-effective are different risk control options?
_______________________________________________
The tools in the OpenRisk Toolbox cover the whole
scope of risk assessment, including risk identification,
risk analysis, and risk evaluation. This is shown in
Table 3.
216
Table 3. OpenRisk Toolbox: risk assessment stages
_______________________________________________
Nr. Risk Identification Risk Analysis Risk Evaluation
_______________________________________________
1 A SA NA
2 A SA NA
3 SA A A
4 A SA NA
5 NA A A
6 A SA A
7 SA SA NA
8 NA SA NA
9 NA SA NA
10 NA SA NA
11 NA SA NA
12 SA A A
13 SA A NA
14 NA SA SA
15 NA SA A
16 NA SA A
17 NA SA A
18 NA A SA
19 NA NA SA
20 NA NA SA
_______________________________________________
A = applicable | NA = not applicable | SA = strongly
applicable
3 OPENRISK WORKSHOPS: WORKSHOP
DETAILS AND TOOL EVALUATION
APPROACH
To understand end-user needs for risk assessment,
and make end-users and stakeholders familiar with
risk management and the OpenRisk Toolbox, several
workshops were held.
A first workshop was organized in Helsinki in
June 2017, focusing on previous experiences with
maritime risk assessment, and end-user expectations
from the new toolbox. The second workshop, held in
Lisbon in October 2017, provided an initial scoping of
available tools, and initial suggestions for how those
can be integrated. A third workshop, which focused
on practical testing and evaluation of selected risk
analysis tools, was organized in Valetta in April 2018.
In October 2018, a final workshop was held in Malmö,
which gave an overview of the guideline for risk
management for pollution preparedness and
response, the OpenRisk Toolbox, and a case study for
the Baltic Sea. It also included a round-table
discussion on future research and development
needs. In both cases workshop participation was free
and open to all interested end users and stakeholders.
Invitations were sent by project staff at HELCOM to
pollution response authorities, maritime safety
authorities, consultants, academia, and regional
response organizations.
As evident from the above descriptions, the third
and fourth workshops are relevant for the second aim
of this paper, i.e. to provide end-user feedback on
selected methods, and on further development needs.
These workshops are described in some more details
in Section 3.1 and 3.2. The methods used to elicit the
end user feedback on the tools and further
development needs are also described below.
3.1 Third OpenRisk workshop
The workshop was organized at the offices of the
Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response
Center of the Mediterranean Sea (REMPEC) in
Valetta, Malta, on 24-25 April 2018. Participants were
familiarized with the OpenRisk guidelines for
regional risk management to improve European
pollution preparedness and response at sea
(OpenRisk, 2018), and specifically with the OpenRisk
Toolbox. Project staff provided presentations on the
tools to be tested and evaluated. These included the
AISyRisk, MarinRisk, IWRAP Mk II, ERC-M,
ADSAM-G, NG-SRW, and FRAM tools, see Table 1, 2,
and 3, respectively, for their full name and reference,
details about the risk management questions they
support, and their use within the risk assessment
process.
In different sessions, the workshop participants
were given a case study to execute using the above
tools. Subsequently, they were asked to answer a
survey, which includes statements listed in Table 4.
Responses consisted of a rating on a 7-point Likert
scale ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly
disagree’, where appropriate combined with space for
open comments.
In addition, a roundtable discussion was held,
where participants could voice their views on the
OpenRisk Toolbox, and their findings concerning the
risk assessment tools tested during the sessions. A
project note taker wrote down and subsequently
summarized the issues raised in this discussion.
Through communication after the workshop,
participants were given the opportunity to comment
on this workshop report, and request modifications or
additions to the discussion points.
The workshop was attended by representatives
from several pollution response organizations,
maritime safety authorities, regional emergency
response centers, marine risk consultancy companies,
and universities. In total, 25 persons participated in
the workshop, including 6 project staff and 19
external participants.
Table 4. Statements for tool evaluation, third workshop
_______________________________________________
Nr. Question
_______________________________________________
1 The tool could be useful to my organization.
2 My organization has the required information to
apply the tool.
3 The method and tool is easy to understand.
4 The tool is easy to use.
5 My organization would benefit from having training
courses to learn how to use the tool.
_______________________________________________
3.2 Fourth OpenRisk workshop
The workshop was organized at the campus of the
World Maritime University in Malmö, Sweden, on 30
October 2018. Participants were familiarized with the
OpenRisk guidelines for regional risk management to
improve European pollution preparedness and
response at sea (OpenRisk, 2018), and specifically
with the OpenRisk Toolbox. Project staff provided a
high-level presentation on the contents of the risk
management guideline and the toolbox.
Subsequently, an oil spill risk assessment case study
217
for selected areas of the Baltic Sea, was introduced.
This includes results of application of AISyRisk,
MarinRisk, FRAM, ERC-M, ADSAM-C/G, and
SpillMod, a tool used by the Finnish Environment
Institute to assess probabilistic oil drift in Finnish
waters and to plan response activities. Also the
principles of the SoE, RM-PCDS, and ALARP tools
were outlined. The reader is referred to Table 1 to 3
for information about these tools.
In this workshop, no practical tests were made
using the tools. Instead, a roundtable discussion was
held, focusing on the future research and
development needs to support analysts and decision
makers in pollution preparedness and response
planning.
A project note taker wrote down and subsequently
summarized the issues raised in this discussion.
Through communication after the workshop,
participants were given the opportunity to comment
on this workshop report, and request modifications or
additions to the discussion points.
The workshop was attended by representatives
from several pollution response organizations,
maritime safety authorities, regional emergency
response centers, marine risk consultancy companies,
and universities. In total, 25 persons participated in
the workshop, including 7 project staff and 18
external participants.
4 RESULTS
Section 4.1 presents the results of the end-user and
stakeholder feedback on the selected OpenRisk tools
tested in the third workshop. This includes a simple
statistical analysis of the survey responses for the
statements of Table 4, and a narrative summary of
some issues raised in the roundtable discussion.
Section 4.2 presents the results of the stakeholder
views on the future research and development needs.
The results shown here are based on survey results
and notes from moderated roundtable discussions.
Participation to the survey was voluntary, and the
response rate was around 53% for most questions,
with a minimum of 32%, and a maximum of 63%).
4.1 Stakeholder and end-user feedback on selected
OpenRisk tools
The survey results of statement 1 of Table 4 are shown
in Figure 1. The figure shows a descriptive statistical
analysis of the responses in box-and-whisker format,
with minima, maxima, median, and lower and upper
quartiles. The results for the different tools are shown
with different colors next to one another.
The results clearly show the variety of support for
using the tools in practical in the organizations. The
AISyRisk, IWRAP Mk II, and MarinRisk receive very
positive ratings, indicating a high perceived
usefulness in pollution preparedness and response.
Tools like ERC-M, ADSAM-G, and NG-SRW received
mixed support, with some participants finding the
tools useful while others do not.
Figure 1. Workshop 3 survey results for statement 1 of
Table 4: “The tool could be useful for my organization.”
OpenRisk tool abbreviations: see Table 1
-3=strongly disagree, 0=agree nor disagree, 3=strongly agree
Interestingly, there was a relatively strong
consensus among the participants that FRAM would
not be useful for their organization.
The survey results for statement 2 of Table 4 are
shown in Figure 2, with similar information as in
Figure 1. For all tools, there appears to be a wide
variety in the data availability. Mostly, there is some
information available for applying the tools, e.g. for
MarinRisk, IWRAP Mk II, ADSAM, and NG-SRW.
For AISyRisk and ERC-M, the variation is large. For
FRAM, respondents found that the information to
utilize the tool is mostly not available in their
organization.
Figure 2. Workshop 3 survey results for statement 2 of
Table 4: “My organization has required information to
apply the tool.”
OpenRisk tool abbreviations: see Table 1
-3=strongly disagree, 0=agree nor disagree, 3=strongly agree
The survey results for statement 3 of Table 4 are
shown in Figure 3, with similar information as in
Figure 1. It is seen that most tools are considered
relatively easy to understand, with especially
AISyRisk and MarinRisk scoring high averages.
IWRAP Mk II, ADSAM-G, and NG-SRW score
similarly, with mostly rather positive responses. ERC-
M was on average rather easy to understand, but
some respondents found it more difficult. FRAM was
considered comparatively more difficult.
218
Figure 3. Workshop 3 survey results for statement 3 of
Table 4:
“The method and tool is easy to understand.”
OpenRisk tool abbreviations: see Table 1
-3=strongly disagree, 0=agree nor disagree, 3=strongly agree
Figure 4. Workshop 3 survey results for statement 4 of
Table 4: “The tool is easy to use.”
OpenRisk tool abbreviations: see Table 1
-3=strongly disagree, 0=agree nor disagree, 3=strongly agree
Figure 5. Workshop 3 survey results for statement 5 of
Table 4: “My organization would benefit from having
training
courses to learn how to use the tool.”
OpenRisk tool abbreviations: see Table 1
-3=strongly disagree, 0=agree nor disagree, 3=strongly agree
The survey results for statement 4 of Table 4 are
shown in Figure 4, with similar information as in
Figure 1. It is seen that most tools are considered
relatively easy to use. MarinRisk, IWRAP Mk II, ERC-
M, ADSAM-G and NG-SRW received moderately
positive responses, but some respondents found the
MarinRisk and ERC-M tools not so easy to use. The
AISyRisk tool received mixed feedback, with some
finding the tool really easy to use, while rather many
participants found it not so easy. FRAM received
moderately positive responses, although a bit less
favorably compared to other tools.
The survey results for statement 5 of Table 4 are
shown in Figure 5, with similar information as in
Figure 1. It is seen that there is strong support for
training for especially AISyRisk. IWRAP Mk II,
ADSAM-G, NG-SRW, and to a lesser extent also
MarinRisk, were also considered valuable tools to
receive training for. Responses were mixed and
showing significant variation for ERC-M. FRAM was
not considered necessary to provide training for in a
PPR risk management context.
4.2 Stakeholder views on future research and development
needs
In a roundtable discussion in the fourth workshop,
several avenues for future research and development
needs, were identified. Some modeling aspects of the
tools were found to require further work, such as the
causation factors in IWRAP Mk II, the scope of vessel
types and environmental influences (waves, waves) in
the ADSAM-G/C models, and the geographical
coverage of and ecosystem values and human uses of
the marine space in the NG-SRW.
It was also found that it would be beneficial to
develop integrated software, e.g. taking AISyRisk as a
basis, to which other tools could be integrated. This
was believed to be a cost-effective way to implement
risk analysis tools in practice, because the
development and operation of the tools is expensive.
However, participants also agreed that different tools
were needed for different problems, and than
integrating all tools in one software package may not
be the best way to proceed.
Existing tools for response system planning were
also raised as requiring additional research, focusing
on the practical response effectiveness rather than on
theoretical recovery values. The actual ability of the
response system to recover oil, burn, or disperse it,
also depends on logistical and environmental aspects,
which are not included in the current approaches.
The issue of availability, accessibility, and quality
of accident and incident data and information was
raised as well. While some risk analysis tools received
quite strong support for implementation (e.g.
AISyRisk), as evident from the results of the third
workshop, the necessary data for this is not available
in all organizations. Hence, data quality and
availability also requires further improvement.
In a wider risk assessment context, another
identified need for future work was the development
and testing of risk identification and analysis methods
and tools for new and emerging risks in maritime
transportation. Such risks relate for instance to the
effects of autonomous vessels on PPR activities, or the
introduction of new fuel types. There were also
concerns raised about the lack of research and
practical guidance for decision makers on risk
acceptability in PPR context. While the ALARP
principle is generally supported, the lack of indicative
219
values of what are acceptable accident rates, and what
is an acceptable response level, was raised as issues
for future work.
Finally, a critical issue for risk management
concerns the development of frameworks, policies,
and procedures for implementing risk management
processes in organizational processes (ISO, 2018).
There is relatively little practical guidance about how
to do this in a PPR context, and very little research has
been dedicated to this topic. There is also a need for
further development of inter-organizational processes
for risk governance, e.g. in regional sea basins, or on a
European level. Developing this however requires
strong political support from member states and
response authorities, and clear roles and
responsibilities.
5 DISCUSSION
The workshop results provide new information about
the perceived usefulness of several oil spill risk
analysis tools, as well as insights in new research and
development needs.
In interpreting the results, it is important to
consider the relatively small number of survey
respondents. This means that the results should be
taken as indicative, and that it would be prudent to
seek further confirmation of the results by additional
research before engaging in specific research and
development actions in support of PPR risk
management. In addition, caution should be taken in
the sense that the workshop participants may not be
constitute a representative sample of the end users
and stakeholders. Participation to the workshops was
voluntary, and it can be assumed that mainly
organizations with an interest in performing risk
assessment and in advancing activity, would dedicate
time and resources to participate. Such sampling
biases are however in practice difficult to avoid. The
practical challenges in having people from different
organizations to participate in workshops such as the
ones presented, are important obstacles to having
more representative samples of stakeholders and end-
users to provide views on the tools and future needs.
Nevertheless, the results provide unprecedented
insights in some practical aspects of selected PPR risk
analysis tools, and in future development directions.
Another interesting issue, which would need
further consideration, is the actual validity of the
tools. As mentioned in the introduction, pragmatic
validity of risk analysis concerns whether the analysis
achieves what it aims to achieve. Practical usefulness
as perceived by end users and stakeholders is an
important aspect of this, but the adequacy of the
methods underlying the tool development clearly is
important as well. This latter aspect of pragmatic
validity has not been addressed in the current work.
The importance of assessing the adequacy of
maritime risk analysis tools has however been
highlighted in earlier work. For instance, an analysis
by Goerlandt and Kujala (2014a) suggests that
application of different risk analysis methods can lead
to significantly different results, see also Goerlandt et
a. (2014b). In this context, it is also noteworthy that
more advanced methods such as FRAM, which have
been shown to outperform other risk identification
and analysis methods, see e.g. Praetorius et al. (2017),
are not supported by end users for practical
implementation, based on the results shown in
Section 4.1. The issue of perceived usefulness,
practicality, and ease of use of risk analysis tools,
versus the firmness of the scientific basis of these,
hence is a topic which would also benefit from further
research.
6 CONCLUSIONS
In this article, an overview has first been given of the
OpenRisk Toolbox, which is a collection of methods
and tools for performing risk assessment for oil spill
Pollution Preparedness and Response activities at sea.
The description included a high-level overview of the
purpose of the tools, the risk management questions
they aim to support, and the location in the risk
assessment process (identification, analysis, or
evaluation).
Second, the results of two end user and
stakeholder workshops have been shown. The first
workshop focused on the evaluation of selected tools,
the second on knowledge gaps and future research
and development needs.
The results indicate that some tools, especially
those of which the execution can be largely automated
in software, have rather high support among end-
users and stakeholders. This includes e.g. AISyRisk,
MarinRisk, and IWRAP Mk II. These tools were also
considered to be relatively easy to understand and
use, and training courses for these were generally
welcomed. However, the availability of data to use
these tools varies significantly between organizations.
Other tools, such as ADSAM-G, NG-SRW, and
ERC-M, were received with more mixed support.
While the tools are considered relatively easy to
understand and use, there was more variation in the
perceived usefulness of the tools in different
organizations. The availability of the required data
was an issue of concern especially for ERC-M.
Nevertheless, for ADSAM-G and NG-SRW, it was
rather generally agreed that having training courses,
would be welcomed.
Finally, FRAM received little support for use in
PPR contexts, across the board. The tool was found
understandable and easy enough, but it was found
that the information needed for it was not available in
organizations, and the results the tool could provide
were not considered very useful. Training courses for
FRAM in a PPR context received little support.
Various knowledge gaps were identified as well.
Apart from the improvement (in terms of accuracy
and scope) and integration of existing tools for oil
spill risk analysis, the data and information quality
and availability needs to be improved so that analyses
can be executed in practice. A need was also
identified to develop risk identification and analysis
methods for new and emerging risks in maritime
transportation. In addition, more guidance should be
developed for risk acceptability (in terms of accident
occurrence and response capabilities). Finally, future
220
work should also focus on how to link the risk
management processes to organizational processes,
and to inter-organizational governance bodies.
ACKNOWLEGMENTS
The work in this article has been executed as part of the
OpenRisk and BONUS BALTIMARI projects. OpenRisk has
received funding from the European Civil Protection and
Humanitarian Aid Operations (EC DG-ECHO), and is
supported by the European regional agreements on
pollution preparedness and response, the European
Maritime Safety Agency, and the Norwegian Coastal
Administration. BONUS BALTIMARI has received funding
from BONUS (Art 185) funded jointly by the European
Union and from Baltic Sea national funding institutions: the
Academy of Finland (Finland), the Research Council for
Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning
(FORMAS) (Sweden), and the Forschungszentrum Jülich
Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH (Germany). This support is
gratefully acknowledged.
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