Offringa, H.

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STATE OF THE AFFAIRS OF RISK ANALYSIS OF THE DUTCH PART OF THE 
NORTH SEA 
Henk Offringa 
National Institute for Coastal and Marine Management, RIKZ 
Kortenaerkade 1, Postbus 20907, 2500 EX Den Haag, the Netherlands 
E-mail: H.R.Offringa@rikz.rws.minvenw.nl 
Background 
In order to make a proper risk analysis of the transport of hazardous substances on the North 
Sea, a good overview is needed of the hazardous substances transported and the sensitive 
coastal areas possibly under threat. In the Netherlands, this process received input a number of 
years ago by a detailed inventory study of hazardous substances transported to and from the 
major Dutch sea ports (including Rotterdam) in the year 2000. This study revealed that the 
larger proportion of such transport comprised crude oil and heavy fuel oil. Also, it became 
apparent that the transport of hazardous substances in ships only passing (but not calling at) 
Dutch ports was an unknown factor. For this reason, the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and 
Water Management decided to join the Safety at Sea project in the Interreg IIIB Program (North 
Sea region). In this presentation, the preliminary results of this on-going project will be 
discussed. 
Inventory of oil transport streams 
In Safety at Sea, partners from public and private organisations in Belgium, Denmark, the 
Netherlands, Norway (Lead Partner), Sweden and the UK join forces to work on different safety 
aspects related to maritime activities. The Netherlands together with Norway are making an 
inventory of oil transport and sensitive areas in order to improve the risk analysis of oil transport 
on the Dutch part of the North Sea. Information on oil transport has been collected for the year 
2004, not only from the major Dutch ports but also from oil ports in the other participating 
Interreg countries. Importantly, Norway and the UK as major oil producers and exporters are 
part of the study. This inventory has led to a much improved picture of oil transport on the 
Dutch part of the North Sea. This will be illustrated by a number of transport maps. 
Risk analysis 
These basic transport data are currently being processed in order to calculate the risk of outflow 
of oil due to collisions, grounding etc. of oil transporting ships. This work is being carried out by 
MARIN, using the SAMSON-model (Safety Assessment Model for Shipping and Off-Shore North 
Sea). The first results will be presented. A comparison will be made to the results obtained 
earlier based on the year 2000 data (see above). 
Sensitive areas 
A lot of effort has gone to defining ecologically sensitive areas off the Dutch coast. In turn, these 
areas are based on a tool to discern the sensitivity of various species and habitats and 
distribution maps during different seasons (Fig. 1).  
 
An example of a relative sensitivity map for heavy fuel oil, based on the presence of 34 species 
(fish, benthos, avifauna and mammals) and their sensitivity values is given in Fig. 1. Other 
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example maps of sensitive areas will be shown and the process to create these maps will be 
explained during the presentation. 
 
 
Fig. 1. Relative sensitivity map for heavy fuel oil. 
 
 
The last challenge in the project is to combine the results of the risk assessment with these 
sensitivity maps, in order to arrive at an equivalent of the Marine Environmental High Risk 
Areas, a concept developed previously in the UK. 


State of the affairs of risk analysis of the Dutch part of the North Sea

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