Project: Sunken Wreck Environmental Risks Assessment

Sunken ships and wrecks having oil onboard form a potential risk for oil pollution. Based on preliminary statistics there are more than 1000 wrecks alone in the Baltic Sea area which have significant amount of oil (cargo or own fuel oil) onboard to cause a significant pollution in the case of oil will start to outflow. Most of these wrecks with significant amount of oil are from the World War II, thus being already corroded and rusty with a higher potential of oil outflow to the environment. This research project will prepare a novel risk analyses method to evaluate the potential of environmental risk of a certain wreck with the basic factors also to evaluate the possibility of underwater salvage operation. First a selected wrecks lying in Estonian, Finnish and Swedish waters will be listed and classified. Classification will be made focusing into the new innovative salvage and underwater operation concept under development. Each wreck case is it's own with certain technical demands and solutions, thus the execution of the risk analyses of this project would offer a sound tool for oil combating officials to prioritize their decision making procedures to focus into the right case. Risk analyses will be based on both ecotoxicological risk model already developed by Chalmers University and the realistic teco-echnical assessment to salvage the wreck.

Acronym	SWERA (Reference Number: call2012inno-67)
Duration	01/05/2014 - 30/04/2016
Project Topic	Eco-technological approaches
Website	visit project website
Network	BONUS
Call	Bonus Call 2012: Innovation

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Suomen ympäristökeskus	Coordinator	Finland
2	Chalmers University of Technology	Partner	Sweden
3	Marine Systems Institute at Tallinn University of Technology	Partner	Estonia
4	Alfons Håkans Oy Ab	Observer	Finland