The authors of this article describe a new approach for analyzing risk related to oil tanker accidents. To better understand the stochastic nature of the phenomenon, they define three tasks: identifying possible causes of an oil spill, evaluating for each cause of accident the probability that an accident occurs and oil is spilled, and estimating the costs for the public at large of an uncertain accident. The authors describe a case study based on oil spill occurrence probabilities for spills in the Aegean Sea. Using their model, they found the costs of oil spills in the Aegean would range from a low of about 264 million euros to 405 million euros. The authors also compute the “expected value” of these losses, which are based on expert probabilities. They note that risk premiums on these expected costs are not negligible when costs for tourism and fisheries are concerned, but quite small for cases of damages to the natural environment.
Cassinelli, Mariaester
Sferra, F
TRT Terms: Costs; Externalities; Oil spills; Oil tankers; Risk assessment; Risk management; Stochastic processes
Geographic Terms: Aegean Sea