Ballast Water Management Decision Support System - Global Maritime Transport and Ballast Water Management: Issues and Solutions - page 225

Decision Support System in Ballast Water Management
The DSS approach has been introduced in the ballast water management (BWM)
fi eld and its need primarily arose with the introduction of the selective BWM
approach. More precisely, it is a supporting tool needed to aid transparency and
consistency when deciding on most effi cient BWM requirements, and to lessen the
burden on vessels (David 2007 ).
There are two different basic selective approaches in BWM, i.e., the “risk assess-
ment (RA) approach” and “compliance history approach”.
The RA approach is when the decision on BWM requirements relies purely on
results from a scientifi cally based RA. For instance, a vessel which sails to a port
where it needs to discharge ballast water, may be exempted from BWM require-
ments if the ballast water does not pose a risk or is of an acceptable level of risk to
a recipient port. However, if the ballast water is found to be of (very) high risk,
different additional measures may be introduced as a protective BWM measure. The
RA approach could be either based on environmental matching, be species specifi c
or use biogeographical aspects (see chapter “ Risk Assessment in Ballast Water
Management ”).
The compliance history approach relies on the documentation of vessels compli-
ance or non-compliance with requested BWM practices, which is very much the
regular practice of Port State Control (PSC) inspections. Vessels may not be in com-
pliance with BWM requirements for different reason (e.g., technical failure, bad
weather). However, the critical issue is that compliance monitoring in the fi rst place
is based on the declaration of responsible crew members (i.e., when ballast water
exchange (BWE) is an implemented BWM method) or it is based on certifi cates (i.e.,
when the use of ballast water management systems (BWMS) is an implemented
BWM method). This means that a compliance history needs to include vessels non-
compliance records and responsible persons' false reporting history (i.e., trustworthi-
ness) (Chad Hewitt pers. comm.). In cases of non-compliance and relative to the
reason (e.g., history of technical failure may be treated less critical than false report-
ing of a responsible person), more attention may be paid to such vessels to ensure
compliance, e.g., conduct PSC inspection on such vessels, or BWM measures may
be even more stringent because of limited or no trustworthiness.
The result of RA is the level of risk posed to the ballast water receiving environ-
ment. According to this result, a decision on what to do is given by the DSS and
followed by appropriate BWM preventive action. Monitoring of compliance with
the implemented BWM regime (i.e., requested actions) is essential. Further, moni-
toring of compliance, as well as the DSS effectiveness, also needs to be conducted.
If necessary, corrective actions are to be taken (see Fig. 2 ).
While the RA result is a simple answer in terms of the level of risk, in the follow-
ing steps a more complex process is generated when a decision on “what to do” has
to be taken considering the RA result, vessel trustworthiness, adequate and feasible
BWM options, etc. DSS is the core part or, in other words, is the brain of the whole
process.