Optimal location and capability of oil-spill response facilities for the south coast of Newfoundland

The south coast of Newfoundland (Canada) includes both open sea and semi-enclosed waterways which collectively account for over 20,000 vessel movements annually. Every such movement poses the risk of an oil spill which can endanger the fragile marine life and tourism locales in the region, and is a source of concern to the communities. In an effort to analyze the problem, we present a two-stage stochastic programming approach which tackles both the location and stockpile of equipment at the emergency response facilities. The proposed optimization program was tested on realistic data collected from publicly available reports and through personal communications with emergency response personnel. These data were then varied to solve a number of scenarios which account for the stochastic nature of the problem parameters. Although only two response facilities seem to be appropriate for almost all scenarios, the size of equipment stockpile is a function of both the societal disutility factor and the trade-off between environmental cost and facility and equipment acquisition cost.

► We investigate the problem of locating stations to respond to oil spill events.
► The problem is modeled and solved as a stochastic programming problem with recourse.
► Tests are performed on real data relative to the south coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
► Computational results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution framework.
► Sensitivity analyses confirm its stability.