SS: Geohazard Assessment: Deciding Risk Acceptance for Hazard
Authors: Brooks Daniel G. 
Published: July 2009

The transportation of petroleum products by sea requires shippers to assess the risk associated with each transit to assure the overall quality of shipping decisions. Shippers are well aware that the amount of revenue generated by the shipment is orders of magnitude smaller than the future revenues put at risk should the shipment not be completed safely. Not only do these risk assessments require a relatively large number of inputs, they must be made real time, they are must take into account a wide range of available data, they must be consistent and defensible though typically made from a number of different geographical locations and by a relatively large staff. The use of multi-attribute utility analysis (MUA) has proven to be an approach that provides a sound methodological basis for assessing risk, the application of this approach to the shipping of petroleum products is an appropriate application and it can generate timely, useful and defensible inputs for the marine assurance process of managing the hazards associated with shipping pretroleum products by sea.

Introduction

In marine transportation there are typically two different - and usually separate - decision processes involved. The initiating decision is usually referred to as a " commercial?? decision and it is based on an evaluation of the business aspects of a given contract. If the commercial evaluation is positive and that side of the business is interested in conducting the business, a ship must be selected to satisfy the contract. The selection, evaluation and approval of a vessel to perform the delivery is referred to within marine transportation as the " vetting process.??

The vetting of ships for specified duty is a structured and rigorous procedure conducted by experienced marine personnel, most of whom have served on board ships - very often, tankers - earlier in their careers and have subsequently come " shore side?? and participate in either the commercial or vetting side of the marine transportation business. The commercial dimension of marine transportation emphasizes the business aspects of a contract; the vetting or marine quality assurance side emphasizes putting the right vessel on a contract to minimize the risk associated with executing the contract.

There are several thousand ships in the database, but usually only a handful are positioned well to engage in a particular contract. There are two levels of vetting a ship to participate in a voyage: the first is making sure the ship is a fit with the cargo, the ports and the terminals within the ports that define the contract duties. The first level of vetting makes sure that the ship fits the duty: it must be of the right type (LNG ships can't carry crude oil, for example), must be certified in the right way, must fit the terminals at both ends of the voyage; must meet some other qualifying criteria, must be available, appropriately priced plus some other " threshold criteria?? that make the ship a possibility for the contract. The second level of vetting involves selecting a ship that achieves the quality assurance objectives of the company. It is this second level of vetting that requires the vetting professionals to consider a large number of ship attributes and the tradeoffs between those attributes in determining the appropriateness of the ship for the duty assignment. In the remainder of this paper, " vetting?? will refer to this second phase of the vetting process, assuming that the ship meets all the technical requirements and is a viable candidate for engaging in the commercial contract that is available.