MARINE TRANSPORT OF DANGEROUS GOODS - RISK ASSESSMENT BASED ON HISTORICAL ACCIDENT DATA

In this paper marine transport of dangerous goods is surveyed on the b asis of 151 accident case histories. Accident frequencies have been es timated for the different accident types (collisions, groundings, fire /explosions and structural damage) and are in the range of 1 x 10(-3) to 2 x 10(-2) per ship per year. Further estimates of the probabilitie s of spillage of at least 100 tons of cargo and/or fatalities in conne ction with the accidents have been made. The consequences measured in number of fatalities were compared for each cargo type (oils and chemi cals) and it was shown that accidents involving oils were twice as fre quent as accidents involving chemicals. However, the distribution of n umber of fatalities seems to be similar for the two types of goods. Co ncerning the local surroundings (port, coastal waters and open sea) it was shown that most accidents, both with small and large consequences , happen in coastal waters. The sizes of the spills have been modelled by linear regression based on accident type and the size of the ship. Fairly good correlation between the spill size and the size of the ta nker was shown for groundings, structural damage and fire or explosion s.