Page 10: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (January 2024)

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Predictability, or “Call your Designated

Responder Early and Often”

By Rik van Hemmen

Predictability is the aim of every human, company, or society. OPA90 has been successful in that regard, but due to its

Humanity simply strives to increase its level of predictabil- measurable success, its predictability is actually going down.

ity whether as a person, or as a group of people. When humans This is a strange conundrum that occurs occasionally. It is attain a certain level of predictability, their hope for the future equivalent to the much-repeated argument that since we did not goes up and their level of anxiety goes down. continue to ? y to the moon, we lost the skills to ? y to the moon,

Oddly, conservatives and progressives both strive for pre- and today have to recreate or reinvent solutions that existed 50 dictability, they just do it in different ways. A conservative years ago. In 1970 we could predict con? dently that we could ? y will say: If nothing changes, then my predictability for the to the moon, but in 2024 that prediction is much more tenuous. future will go up. Meanwhile, a progressive will say: If I care- Since there are few large oil spills today, we have entered a fully change things that are not predictable, my level of pre- similar conundrum. We do not really know if we can manage dictability goes up. a large oil spill today, there are exercises, but exercises are not

Progressives and conservatives also know why the other is the real thing.

wrong. A conservative will say: “Once things change, predict- A real oil spill is unpredicted and unpredictable, and while ability will go down”, and a progressive will say: “If we do we hope everybody will show up in time we do not really not change things that are not predictable, predictability will know if this will occur. Moreover, since we have not had a go down.” In effect, predictability and decision making are signi? cant number of serious oil spills recently, shipowners closely tied together. One can make better decisions when the and operators now start to imagine that a small oil spill will future can be predicted more accurately. not turn into a big oil spill. However, this ignores an underly-

Predictability can be improved in many ways. Science is ing reality. Small disasters that are not rigorously managed pretty good at predicting certain things. Engineering also does can turn into big disasters.

a decent job at predicting certain things. Societies actually ex- If this were to occur, the salvors and response contractors ist to increase predictability, whether it relates to managing will be called in after the small disaster turned into a large disasters or with social programs such as social security. disaster. From their point of view this may not be a bad deal,

OPA 90 was actually created to increase predictability. The because big disasters make more money than small disasters, entire structure allows stakeholders to proceed with a level of but, from an overall disaster management point of view, this predictability in a situation where predictability can appear to approach is, well, disastrous.

be sorely absent. Imagine the following scenarios:

When predictability increases, it becomes easier to make • Scenario 1. A vessel has a soft grounding. It is expect- decisions and that will help to gain control of a disaster. ed the vessel can be re? oated on the next high tide without external assistance. At the next high tide, the vessel is being re? oated under direction of the Captain and use of her own engines and ancillary equipment, but during the re? oating the vessel passes over an abandoned anchor and tears out the bot- tom. Fuel oil spills and the vessel is ? ooding and settles down.

The Owner now has to call the QI and the designated Salvage and Marine Fire? ghting contractor (salvor). They cannot im- mediately be on site and now the USCG becomes uncomfort- able. The spill continues and eventually the salvors and spill contractor secure the vessel and cargo and pick up the mess. In the post mortem analysis everybody is embarrassed since the response was less effective than desired.

• Scenario 2. A vessel has a soft grounding. It is expected the vessel can be re? oated on the next high tide. The Owner

Copyright Björn Wylezich/AdobeStock 10 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • January 2024

MR #1 (1-17).indd 10 1/8/2024 9:20:34 AM