Date of Award
1996
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Master of Science in Maritime Affairs
Specialization
General Maritime Administration & Environment Protection
Campus
Malmö, Sweden
Country
Trinidad and Tobago
First Advisor
Sampson, Theodore.
Abstract
It may be easier to summarise what this dissertation is not about as a means of assisting the reader in focusing on what this dissertation is all about. It is not a dissertation on environmental concerns and of the need to act in sustainable ways. It is not about ports in the Developing Countries of Wider Caribbean Region (DCWCR) or of their need to secure reception facilities. Nor is this dissertation a subject on the MARPOL 73/78 Convention. However, all of these issues are a part of this dissertation and they have contributed to the refinement of this research effort. Essentially, this dissertation is about choices, and of assisting those in positions of making decisions, to make practical and sustainable choices. This dissertation is about an approach that can be adapted to assist this process of decision making. The WCISW project currently undertaken by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) faces a difficult task of identifying the most appropriate locations to serve as hub ports for reception of MARPOL Armex I, II, and V type wastes. A large number of important considerations must be evaluated and considered with respect to the environment, vessel traffic, national legal systems and geographic locations of the ports that concern the twenty two different nations. These considerations aside, political sensitivities demand a method of selection that is open, transparent and allows the views of those representing diverse interests and port locations to fairly influence the ultimate decision. If these diverse interest cannot be made to feel that their voices have been heard and considered, then the outcome of the project may be to lose the WCR co-operative spirit that will be necessary for a hub port concept to be effective. For this reason a methodology has been applied to the decision process of this project that has a capability to simultaneously involve any number of interest groups, any number of selection considerations, and any number of selection options. Not wishing to duplicate the same issues of the current project managers, additional concerns were identified for evaluation, based on lectures delivered over the course of the study at this university. Categories were devised, the issues were subjectively prioritised, justified and a weighted value applied to each. Following this, the data was entered into an Excel spreadsheet programme developed to handle the matrix of options, selection considerations and interest group perspectives. Based upon limited data, the subjective evaluation of the various considerations were made in order to present as realistic a scenario as possible. It is hoped that the process applied in this approach would demonstrate the range of applications possible, the range of interest groups that can be involved in the process and the objectivity and reliability of the eventual results.