Open-Source tools for regional risk assessments for improved European preparedness and response at sea (OPENRISK)

Area of activity/subject: Maritime risk assessments

Summary of the project: Increasingly, EU Member States commission national assessments of the risks of accidents and spills at sea in order to improve pollution prevention, preparedness and response (PPR).

Such risk assessments are also carried out for larger transboundary sea areas within regional intergovernmental organisations established to ensure swift joint regional response to pollution incidents, including HELCOM for the Baltic Sea.

However, due to the costs involved such risk assessments are commonly carried out with lengthy intervals and with diverging methodologies. Due to this they are rarely comparable, either across time or space. This makes it difficult to follow developments in accident and pollution risk over time, and thus verify the efficiency of policy measures.

In addition, methods employed are not entirely transparent making it potentially difficult to justify measures in national processes.

The OPENRISK project aims to take first steps in developing an openly available and fully transparent method toolbox for national and regional risk assessments in close cooperation with the wider community of regional seas PPR organisations and their members.

The open source and transparent approach reflects the aim that the tools developed would be readily available for modification according to local needs and provide a starting point for further collective EU -wide, or even worldwide, method development after project closure.

Beneficiary

HELCOM

Katajanokanlaituri 6 B, 3rd floor
FI-00160 Helsinki
Finland

http://www.helcom.fi

Project coordinators

• World Maritime University - Sweden - http://www.wmu.se
• Finnish Environment Institute - Finland - http://www.syke.fi/
• MARIN - The Netherlands - www.marin.nl

Presentation at the kick off meeting