Modeling and evaluation of the oil-spill emergency response capability based on linguistic variables

An evaluation of the oil-spill emergency response capability (OS-ERC) currently in place in modern marine management is required to prevent pollution and loss accidents. The objective of this paper is to develop a novel OS-ERC evaluation model, the importance of which stems from the current lack of integrated approaches for interpreting, ranking and assessing OS-ERC performance factors. In the first part of this paper, the factors influencing OS-ERC are analyzed and classified to generate a global evaluation index system. Then, a semantic tree is adopted to illustrate linguistic variables in the evaluation process, followed by the application of a combination of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to construct and calculate the weight distribution. Finally, considering that the OS-ERC evaluation process is a complex system, a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE) is employed to calculate the OS-ERC level. The entire evaluation framework obtains the overall level of OS-ERC, and also highlights the potential major issues concerning OS-ERC, as well as expert opinions for improving the feasibility of oil-spill accident prevention and protection.