Decision-making process for places of refuge in hazardous and noxious substances incident: Case study of South Korea

The importance of properly providing places of refuge for ships has emerged in recent years, however, it is still difficult to make a decision with sufficient evidence. While various decision models were investigated, those approaches are difficult to apply to more diverse situations than oil spills. This study established the decision-making process for places of refuge for cases of hazardous and noxious substances (HNS) incidents. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was conducted to determine the priorities of the decision criteria selected from existing studies. Then, A total of 3 higher-level criteria and 12 lower-level criteria were compared pairwise by expert groups. The results of the criteria prioritization show the importance of HNS-related criteria; prevailing wind, available chemical response vessels, and proximity to residential area. The established process was then applied to the incident scenario on the southeastern sea of Korea. A case study supports the applicability of the proposed decision-making process by identifying the available data sources corresponding to selected criteria.