Oil Spill Response Capability Assessment: Describing Tasks and Effects
(2020) VBRM15 20201Division of Risk Management and Societal Safety
- Abstract
- Oil spills require more or less significant response efforts to be controlled. While the frequency of severe oil spills has decreased, an increase in marine traffic is forecasted in the future. Research has found that capability to respond to adverse events is often understood and assessed based on resources, which in practice has shown to provide an insufficient understanding of the capability to respond to offshore oil spills. The study takes a point of departure from this problem and a potential solution found in theory, which proposes a new definition and description of capability including tasks and their effects in response to certain events, providing a better basis for decision-making. The study engages in a first step toward... (More)
- Oil spills require more or less significant response efforts to be controlled. While the frequency of severe oil spills has decreased, an increase in marine traffic is forecasted in the future. Research has found that capability to respond to adverse events is often understood and assessed based on resources, which in practice has shown to provide an insufficient understanding of the capability to respond to offshore oil spills. The study takes a point of departure from this problem and a potential solution found in theory, which proposes a new definition and description of capability including tasks and their effects in response to certain events, providing a better basis for decision-making. The study engages in a first step toward applying the capability description in the field of offshore oil spill response. By utilizing the experience and expertise of subject matter experts through interviews, and output from research and practice through a literature study, the research concludes on tasks and event parameters essential in describing oil spill response capability. Furthermore, inconclusive results on certain tasks and how to best describe their effect are discussed. Finally, broader methodological insight is presented on how to approach the capability description in practice, and the way forward for utilizing the research results and handling of the remaining uncertainties. (Less)
- Popular Abstract
- Assessing the effect of tasks in oil spill response to decide whether more must be done.
Imagining the consequences of oil spills, images of beaches and seabirds covered in oil typically comes to mind. While the consequences of oil spills can vary greatly, their potential to cause considerable losses have materialized on several occasions throughout history. The findings of this study are sought to contribute to, in the long-term, reducing such losses by providing insight on the use of a new way of assessing response capability.
Assessing an organisations capability to respond is a matter of gaining an idea on whether they can manage an event in a satisfying way. Such assessments can be conducted in different ways, for example by... (More) - Assessing the effect of tasks in oil spill response to decide whether more must be done.
Imagining the consequences of oil spills, images of beaches and seabirds covered in oil typically comes to mind. While the consequences of oil spills can vary greatly, their potential to cause considerable losses have materialized on several occasions throughout history. The findings of this study are sought to contribute to, in the long-term, reducing such losses by providing insight on the use of a new way of assessing response capability.
Assessing an organisations capability to respond is a matter of gaining an idea on whether they can manage an event in a satisfying way. Such assessments can be conducted in different ways, for example by counting resources such as equipment. However, a new way to assess capability is suggested in scientific theory, where it is proposed to assess capability through capability description. In describing capability, one describes the event that the capability to respond is assessed for and the effect of the tasks conducted when responding to this particular event. Opposed to for example counting resources, how these resources are used is in focus and the effect that this has, which is seen in the consequences. Depending on how severe an event is and how large effects the response manage to create, the consequences of the event will be higher or lower.
After applying this new view on capability in the field of oil spill response, the study concludes on tasks to focus on when describing what is done in response and event parameters to account for in describing the event that these tasks are conducted as a response to. How to show the effect of the tasks in consequences is still somewhat uncertain. However, insight is provided on how to use the findings and handle remaining uncertainties by refining them closer to practice.
The study also contributes with methodological insight on how to identify tasks, event parameters and consequences reflecting the effect of tasks in practice. This since the new way of assessing capability had not been investigated in practice before, which caused the engagement in the study to require an exploration of methods to do such identifications.
The study was conducted to target a problem identified in practice regarding the assessment of capability. Capability to respond to adverse events has been found to often revolve around resources, and this view on capability has shown to cause oil spill response organisations to overestimate their ability to affect the consequences of spills. The capability description functioned as a potential solution to this problem in the study, which has shown to serve as a better basis for making decisions on whether response capability should be increased. The findings are based on interviews with experts on oil spill response, and relevant literature in different ways relating to the field. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9016040
- author
- Mikaelsson, Mari LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- VBRM15 20201
- year
- 2020
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Operational oil spill response, capability estimation, capability description, response capability
- language
- English
- id
- 9016040
- date added to LUP
- 2020-06-11 15:20:05
- date last changed
- 2020-06-11 15:20:05
@misc{9016040,
abstract = {{Oil spills require more or less significant response efforts to be controlled. While the frequency of severe oil spills has decreased, an increase in marine traffic is forecasted in the future. Research has found that capability to respond to adverse events is often understood and assessed based on resources, which in practice has shown to provide an insufficient understanding of the capability to respond to offshore oil spills. The study takes a point of departure from this problem and a potential solution found in theory, which proposes a new definition and description of capability including tasks and their effects in response to certain events, providing a better basis for decision-making. The study engages in a first step toward applying the capability description in the field of offshore oil spill response. By utilizing the experience and expertise of subject matter experts through interviews, and output from research and practice through a literature study, the research concludes on tasks and event parameters essential in describing oil spill response capability. Furthermore, inconclusive results on certain tasks and how to best describe their effect are discussed. Finally, broader methodological insight is presented on how to approach the capability description in practice, and the way forward for utilizing the research results and handling of the remaining uncertainties.}},
author = {{Mikaelsson, Mari}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Oil Spill Response Capability Assessment: Describing Tasks and Effects}},
year = {{2020}},
}