OIL SPILLS (1978-2020)

This is another research area completely unrelated to my PhD. It includes several distinct activities, unrelated to each other, which collectively span more than 30 years. The first was a series of MIT projects on oil spill response, when I started my academic career there. A second activity started some 10 years after I left MIT,  during my stay at NTUA. It includes EU-MOP, an EU FP6 multi-partner project on oil spill response via robots, of which I was the overall consortium manager (one of the 3 such EU projects). And another activity is related to the IMO action on environmental risk evaluation criteria, again while I was at NTUA. All three have been pretty exciting.

Here goes the description:

MIT

At MIT I had the following projects (each granted via a competitive process):

·       “The Design of a Pollution Response System for Small Oil Spills” (July 1979- June 1981). The Henry L. Doherty Foundation. I was the sole PI.

·        “Oil Spill Cleanup Economic and Regulatory Models” (July 1979- June 1981). National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/ Naval Facilities Engineering Command/ U.S. Coast Guard/ Commonwealth of Massachusetts/ and others. Dan Nyhart and I were Co-Principal Investigators.

·        “Putting the MIT Oil Spill Model to Work” July 1981-September 1983) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Naval Facilities Engineering Command/ Petro-Canada. Dan Nyhart and I were Co-PIs.

The MIT Oil Spill project ranks as one of the most important and exciting projects I had at MIT, and marked the start of my academic career there. It involved funding (via the MIT Sea Grant program) from NOAA, the US Navy, the US Coast Guard, the state of Massachusetts and Petro Canada and spanned 4 years (1979 to 1983). My collaborator on this project was Dan Nyhart, a Professor who had dual appointment: Ocean Engineering and Sloan School. He was a lawyer. 

The main project had the Doherty project as a sidekick. This was a junior endowed professorship in Ocean Utilization. I had it for two years (7/1979-6/1981), my first two years as an MIT Assistant Professor. This was my first major award while at MIT – the second being the TSL (ORSA) PhD dissertation award a few months later (see vehicle routing section)- both in 1979.  

Papers No. 1 to 9 (and later No. 17) were connected to this series of projects. Also connected were the PhDs of Babis Ziogas (RIP) and George Tharakan, of which I was the supervisor. Babis worked on the tactical response problem and George on the strategic. Other RAs working on the project included Andy Baird and Walter Laird. They co-authored some of the papers. Other co-authors were Avishai Ceder (Technion), Paul Yaroschak (US Navy) and David Betts (Petro Canada).

More on oil spills at MIT HERE.

NTUA

Oil spill research at NTUA started with the diploma and PhD theses of Nikos Ventikos. We also had a small project:

·       “Development of an Operational System and Methodology to Determine the Environmentally, Legally and Socioeconomically Optimal Routes of Transit of Oil Reserves of the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean via the Aegean Sea- project AEGEAN”. General Secretariat of Research and Technology (2003-2006).

Related papers:  No. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20.

Research continued with two EU FP6 projects, OSH and EU MOP, on oil spill response. NTUA was the coordinator of EU MOP, with me the overall consortium manager -that was one of the 3 EU projects that I managed while at NTUA.

·       “Oil Sea Harvester- OSH project” (December 2004- November 2007). Directorate General for Research –6^th Framework Programme (multi-partner project, Leader: Alstom Chantiers de l’ Atlantique).

·        “Elimination Units for Marine Oil Pollution- EU-MOP project” (February 2005-January 2008). Directorate General for Research –6^th Framework Programme (multi-partner project, Leader: NTUA, H.N. Psaraftis Consortium Manager).

 Related papers: No. 21, 23, 25, 26, 27.

The third (and perhaps more important) activity on oil spills relates to the IMO. Quite unexpectedly, I was asked to chair a series of correspondence and working groups at the MEPC (IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee) on environmental risk evaluation criteria, as they apply to oil pollution. The activity lasted some 4 years (2007 to 2011) and resulted in the formulation of IMO guidelines on that subject. The PhD thesis of Christos Kontovas at NTUA was related to that activity.

Most notable in this activity was the quest by several classification societies, like DNV, GL, BV and some others, to establish that the damage cost of oil spills was $60,000 a ton. Something that was also promoted by EU project SAFEDOR and would have profound regulatory implications if adopted. It took 4 years of IMO work, coupled with work at NTUA, to reject this (quite preposterous in my opinion) proposition.

Related papers: No. 28 to 32. See also paper No. 15 in the safety & security section (the one that got rejected 4 or 5 times).

1.     Psaraftis,H.N., A.V.Baird, J.D.Nyhart, 1980, National Response Capability to Oil Spills: A Systems Approach, OCEANS'80 Conference (IEEE), Seattle, September.

2.     Nyhart,J.D., H.N.Psaraftis, W.S.Laird, 1981, The Legal Environment Component of an Oil Spill Cleanup Model, 1981 Oil Spill Conference (EPA/API/USCG), Atlanta, March.

3.     Tharakan,G.G., H.N.Psaraftis, 1981, A Critical Review of Oil Spill Risk Analysis, OCEANS'81 Conference (IEEE), Boston, September.

4.     Psaraftis,H.N., 1983, Water Pollution, in McGraw-Hill 1982-83 Yearbook of Science and Technology.

5.     Psaraftis,H.N., J.D.Nyhart, D.A.Betts, 1983, First Experiences with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Oil Spill Model, 1983 Oil Spill Conference (EPA/API/USCG), San Antonio, Μarch.

6.     Nyhart,J.D., H.N.Psaraftis, P.J.Yaroschak, 1983, Putting an Oil Spill Cleanup Computer Model to Work for the Navy, 1983 ASNE Conference, Washington DC, May.

7.     Psaraftis,H.N., B.O.Ziogas, 1985, A Tactical Decision Algorithm for the Optimal Dispatching of Oil Spill Cleanup Equipment, Management Science 31, No.12, 1475-1491.

8.     Psaraftis,H.N., G.G.Tharakan, A.Ceder, 1986, Optimal Response to Oil Spills: The Strategic Decision Case, Operations Research 34, No.2, 203-217.

9.     Psaraftis,H.N., 1987, Oil Spill Risk Management: The Strategic Response Case, TNO Conference on Oil Pollution, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, February.

10.  Ventikos N.P., H.N. Psaraftis, Iacovou E., 1998, A Prototype Statistical Approach of Oil Pollution in the Mediterranean Sea,  International Conference OIL SPILL 98, Southampton, UK, July.

11.  Ventikos N.P., H.N. Psaraftis, E.  Iacovou E., 1998, A Statistical and Strategic Survey of Oil Pollution in the Mediterranean Sea, International Conference on Applied Sciences and the Environment ASE 98, Cadiz, Spain, September.

12.  Ventikos N.P., Dilzas K.P., Psaraftis H.N., 2001, An Approach on Marine Pollution Issues by the Usage of Data Bases and their Correlation to Applications of E-Business, Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of Safety of Maritime Transport, Chios, Greece.

13.  Ventikos N.P., Psaraftis H.N., Lyridis D.V., 2001, A Statistical Approach on Oil Pollution in Greek Seas, Proceedings of International Conference WATER POLLUTION 2001, Rhodes, Greece,  141-149.

14.  Ventikos N.P., Dilzas K.P., Lyridis D.V., Psaraftis H.N., 2001, Contribution of Telematics in the Management of Oil Spill Issues, Proceedings of International Conference on Shipping Technology & Environment, Piraeus, Greece.

15.  Ventikos N.P., K. P. Dilzas, H.N. Psaraftis, 2001, A Review Analysis of International and Greek Databases Concerning Oil Spills: The Case of a New Greek Oil Spill Database, ISOPE-2001 Conference, Stavanger, Norway, June.

16.  Ventikos, N.P., H.N. Psaraftis, 2001, Implementation of a Multi-Level Statistical Analysis on a New Database Covering Oil Pollution in Greek Seas: Definitions & Results, International Conference of Environmental Statistics, Cadiz, Spain, November.

17.  Ceder, A., G. G. Tharakan, H. N. Psaraftis, 2001, A Synthesis Algorithm for Responding to Oil Spills Using complementary Locations on Networks, Applied Mathematical Modelling Journal 25, No.4, 269-285.

18.  Ventikos N.P., K.P. Dilzas, D.V. Lyridis, H.N. Psaraftis, 2002, The Usage of Tree Analysis in the Context of a Strategic Approach Concerning Incidents of Oil Marine Pollution: Introduction of the Event-Decision Network, ISOPE-2002 Conference, Kitakyushu, Japan, May.

19.  Ventikos N.P., Vergetis E., Psaraftis H.N., Triantafyllou G., 2004, A High-Level Synthesis of Response Equipment for Multi-Type Confronting of Oil Spill Incidents/Accidents, Journal of Hazardous Materials, Elsevier Science, Issues 1-2, vol. 107, New York, New York, 51-58.

20.  Ventikos N.P., Psaraftis H.N., 2004,  Spill Incident Modeling: A Critical Survey of the Event-Decision Network in the Context of IMO’s Formal Safety Assessment, Journal of Hazardous Materials, Elsevier Science, Issues 1-2, vol. 107, New York, New York, 59-66.

21.  Psaraftis H.N., Ventikos N.P., 2006, An Intelligent Robot System to Respond to Oil Spills: the EU-MOP Project, Proceedings of the INTERSPILL 2006 International Conference, London, UK.

22.  Lyridis D.V., Ventikos N.P., Zacharioudakis P.G., Psaraftis H.N., Volakis S., 2006, Risk Limits of Oil Transportation in the Aegean Sea, Proceedings of the 16^th International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference (ISOPE 2006), San Francisco, CA, vol. IV,  423-431.

23.  Ventikos N.P., Psaraftis H.N., 2006, Ship-Generated Oil Pollution in the Mediterranean Sea: the Situation and the EU-MOP Solution, Proceedings of the International Conference on Shipping in the Era of Social Responsibility, Argostoli, Greece.

24.  Ventikos N.P., Chaviaris E., Psaraftis H.N, 2006, Tanker Accidents and Environmental Disasters: has the Maritime Industry Acknowledged their Connections to HOEs?, Proceedings of the World Maritime Technology Conference – EEZ Management (WMTC 06), London, UK, vol. EEZ Management, 95-105.

25.  Psaraftis H.N., Ventikos N.P., Lyridis D.V., 2006, The EU-MOP Concept: A Swarm Robotics Approach for Oil Spill Control, Proceedings of the International Conference on Small Craft Related Sciences and Engineering (SMALL CRAFT 06), Bodrum, Turkey.

26.  Gkonis K.G., N.P. Ventikos, and H.N. Psaraftis, 2007, A decision-making model for oil spill response at the tactical level, International Symposium on Maritime Safety, Security and Environmental Protection (SSE07), Athens, Greece, September.

27.  Gkonis, K.G., , N. M.P. Kakalis, N. P. Ventikos, Y. Ventikos, H. N. Psaraftis, 2008, A Model-Based Approach for Tactical Decision making in oil spill response, 2^nd International Symposium on Ship Operations, Management and Economics, SNAME Greek Section, Athens, September.

28.  Kontovas, C.A., H.N. Psaraftis, 2008, Marine Environment Risk Assessment: A Survey on the Disutility Cost of Oil Spills, 2^nd International Symposium on Ship Operations, Management and Economics, SNAME Greek Section, Athens, September.

29.  Psaraftis, H. N., 2008, Environmental Risk Evaluation Criteria, WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs,  Vol. 7, No. 2, 411-430.

30.  Kontovas, C.A., H. N. Psaraftis, N. P. Ventikos, 2010, An Empirical Analysis of IOPCF Oil Spill Cost Data, Marine Pollution Bulletin, 60:9, 1455-1466.

31.  Kontovas C.A., Ventikos N.P., Psaraftis H.N., 2011, An updated analysis of IOPCF oil spill data: Estimation of the disutility cost of tanker oil spills, Sustainable Maritime Transportation and Exploitation of Sea Resources, CRC Press,  921-929.

32.  Kontovas C.A., Ventikos N.P., Psaraftis H.N., 2011, Estimating the Consequence Costs of Oil Spills from Tankers, 2011 SNAME Annual Meeting & Expo, November 18-19, Houston, TX.

DTU

I had a (very) small project with DTU Aqua on marine pollution:

• Maritime Pollution in Denmark, DTU Aqua leader, funded by Velux Foundation, 2020.