Methods and Tools for Environmental Assessment

Selecting measures to reduce the overall environmental impact associated with shipping can be a difficult task, and a systematic approach is needed. There is risk of sub-optimisation and counteraction of different measures with one another if decisions are made based on fragmented decision support. An example of a system effect is the long lifetime of ships, which slows the introduction of new technologies. Therefore, design and retrofits must fulfil not only present but also future requirements for environmental sustainability. This chapter describes the basic details of several methods and tools that can be used in environmental assessments within the shipping industry. The methods and tools described are grouped into three categories: (1) procedural tools, (2) analytical tools and (3) aggregated tools. Examples of procedural tools are environmental impact assessment, multi-criteria decision analysis and risk management; life cycle assessment (LCA) and environmental risk assessment are examples of analytical tools. Aggregated tools include indicators, indices, and footprints.