Assessing oil spill risk in port tanker operations using a multiattribute utility approach to ranking and selection

In this paper we apply multiattribute ranking and selection to the management of a port facility in the environmentally sensitive Prince William Sound area of Alaska. The approach allows tradeoffs between the disparate performance measures associated with the operation of the port and non-linear scoring of the attributes, including the notion of satisfying a target level of performance. The example considered is based on real data from a risk analysis of the port that has been simplified for ease of exposition, but the methods employed generalize to situations with real data and larger number of performance measures.