CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS
VOL. 77, 2019
A publication of
The Italian Association
of Chemical Engineering
Online at www.cetjournal.it
Guest Editors: Genserik Reniers, Bruno Fabiano
Copyright © 2019, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l.
I SBN 978-88-95608-74-7; I SSN 2283-9216
Openrisk: a Risk Management Toolbox for Prevention and
Response of Pollution from Maritime Activities
Valtteri Laine*
a,b
, Floris Goerlandt
a,c
, Michael Baldauf
d
, Raza Ali Mehdi
d
, Yvonne
Koldenhof
e
a Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM), Katajanokanlaituri 6, 00160 Helsinki, Finland
b Aalto University, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Marine Technology, Otakaari 1, 02150 Espoo, Finland
c Dalhousie University, Department of Industrial Engineering, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 4R2
d World Maritime University, Fiskehamnsgatan 1, SE-201 24 Malmö, Sweden
e Maritime Research Institute Netherlands, Haagsteeg 2, 6780 PM Wageningen, the Netherlands
valtteri.laine@helcom.fi
Risks in the maritime domain have various sources, of which the transportation of oil and other noxious
substances is one of the key concerns to industry and public stakeholders (HELCOM, 2018b). With the
increased presence of off-shore wind farms, off-shore production and processing facilities, new risks have also
emerged over the past decades. The previous large-scale ship and off-shore accidents, such as Erika (1999),
Prestige (2002) and Deepwater Horizon (2010) have demonstrated that e.g. oil spills can have disastrous
impacts on the marine and coastal ecosystems (Venesjärvi R., 2016), and they can cause also significant
economic losses (Yamada Y., 2009). In addition to the accidental spills, there are also operational spills, which
are small, but frequent, intentional or inadvertent spillages in the sea due to ship operations (Neves A. et al.,
2015).
1. Introduction
To be prepared and to respond to different kinds of spills, states have implemented various national
mechanisms for pollution in the maritime domain, including activities that are often embedded in regional
cooperation frameworks clustered around certain sea areas. For instance, within the frameworks of the
Helsinki Convention, the Bonn Agreement and the Barcelona Convention with the REMPEC, these activities
include, e.g. adoption of operational procedures between the Contracting Parties, combating exercises for
testing the regional cooperation in practice and risk assessments of designated sea areas. To summarize, the
importance of effective risk management within the context of Pollution Preparedness and Response has
been recognized both in national and regional level in Europe and worldwide.
To support the risk-informed decision-making processes of Pollution Preparedness and Response authorities,
several risk assessment tools and techniques have been developed during the past. To identify gaps in the
existing open source risk assessment tool selection, fill these gaps, and integrate the tools in a structured
manner, the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) initiated a project to develop a freely available toolbox, known
as the OpenRisk Toolbox. This is a set of tools and techniques especially for identifying hazards and
analyzing risks of maritime activities. It is focused on accidental oil spills from maritime transportation, where
regional cooperation would be required. While several of the currently available tools focus exclusively on the
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 off-shore activities. This paper briefly
introduces the OpenRisk project, provides an overview of the OpenRisk Toolbox, and outlines future
directions.
DOI: 10.3303/CET1977173
Paper Received: 29 October 2018; Revised: 19 April 2019; Accepted: 16 June 2019
Please cite this article as: Laine V., Goerlandt F., Baldauf M., Mehdi R., Koldenhof Y., 2019, OpenRisk: A risk management toolbox for
prevention and response of pollution from maritime activities, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 77, 1033-1038 DOI:10.3303/CET1977173
1033