Hellenic Seawaters, with the Aegean Archipelago consisting their center, form one of the most important maritime links of the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, they are also characterized by an extremely rich and unique marine environment with a large coastline, thousands of islands and intense activity of ships. The coexistence of so many important countries around the Mediterranean along with the geomorphology of their coasts has resulted in increased maritime traffic through specific routes in the Aegean Sea.
These routes represent a unique example of an area where a serious marine accident with high environmental impact may happen. Hence, the need to reduce the possibility of maritime accidents in the Aegean is of vital importance, as a possible accident would affect all the social, economic, environmental and cultural sectors of Greece and the wider region of the Eastern Mediterranean basin. There is therefore a pressing need to identify ships with a potentially high accident risk crossing the Aegean Sea by developing a suitable model and highlighting areas with increased environmental risk in the area.
The current PhD thesis stems from the above-mentioned need and its goal is the monitoring and reduction of ecological risk in Greek national waters and especially in the Aegean Sea, due to a marine accident. The probability of a vessel accident occurrence is due to internal (vessel) parameters (age and kind of the vessel etc), and external (dynamical) parameters (weather etc). The former present a static character because they cannot change during the travel of a vessel. Instead the latter have a dynamic character because they continuously change. Another important aspect of the current research is the development of a consequences model which will refer to the estimated cleanup cost after a certain accident occurs. The model developed is based on Bayesian Networks and Fuzzy Logic.
