Update and Recalculation of national oil spill contingency plans in the Baltic Sea

Projektleitung: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Fokke Saathoff

Förderung: South Baltic Programme ERDF

Kooperation: SYKE, Finland; WMU, Sweden

Zeitraum: 01.10.2020-30.09.2021

Einordung:
Institut: Professur Geotechnik und Küstenwasserbau

Projektbeschreibung:
Based on the number of ships the Baltic Sea is one of the busiest seas in the world. At the same time, it is
one of the safest based on the number of accidents. This is due to national and international efforts.
Nevertheless, accidents happen and they can be accompanied by spills of various substances. Based on
HELCOM regulations, individual countries need to have contingency plans in place to respond to these
kinds of accidents. By now every Baltic Sea state has a contingency plan. It is a good thing to have a plan,
but they need to be trained and they need to be updated. Especially the updating process is not handled
with the necessary focus. This is due to regular tasks and the great amount of work that comes with the
complete update of a national contingency plan. For example the German National Contingency Plan is
12 years old. Futhermore, boundary conditions change over time and new baseline values are available.
For example HELCOM's Second Holistic Assessment of the Ecosystem Health of the Baltic Sea status was
finally released in 2018. The environmental data provided in this report is not part of any risk analysis in
the exisiting plans. In summary this leads to a very inhomogeneous status of preparedness.
Throughout the seed money project, all national contingency planning agencies in the Baltic Sea will be
contacted and the need / willingness for the update of plans will be evaluated. Based on these results,
the consortium for the full project will be developed. It is of greatest importance to involve the
authorities responsible for the implementation of updated plans as project partners. This will ensure a
realistic update and finally the implementation of the plans.
Based on their EU membership the individual Baltic Sea countries contribute to a pool of response
capacities organized by the European Maritime Safety Agency. These capacities are calculated using a
technical approach that needs an update as well. The United States Bureau of Safety and Environmental
Enforcement have been using this kind of approach in the past, too. After the accident of the Deepwater
Horizon significant shortcomings in this approach were identified. This led to a recalculation of the US
response capacities based on a more realistic approach. The results of this process were published from
2016 to 2018. Even though this information has been available for several years, the European capacities
are still calculated based on the old approach.
In the full project, the Baltic Sea Region will be used as a model region to update and recalculate the
response capacities of the individual countries. A comparison of the results based on the old and the new
approaches will be prepared for the Baltic Sea.
The main outcomes of the project will be updated national spill response plans including a general
updated on the plan itself, the used initial data and an updated recovery capacity based on the latest
available approaches.

Bearbeiter: Dr. Miriam van Thenen

Zum Projekt: Mitarbeiter, Publikationen
Weitere Projekte im Forschungsteilschwerpunkt