Overview
The transport policy directives state that the transport system should be economically efficient. For other modes of transport – notably road transport – there is a well-developed literature and practice regarding the valuation of accidents. In the maritime sector less progress has been made.
The objective of the project is to suggest valuations for three types of maritime accidents: injuries including casualties, vessel damages and oil spills.
Results
This report adds valuations for three types of maritime accidents: injuries including casualties, vessel damages and oil spills. For injuries and causalities there are well-established valuations for land transports administrated by Arbetsgruppen för samhällsekonomiska kalkyl- och arbetsmetoder inom transportområdet (a working-group addressing issues on the application of CBA in the transport sector) (ASEK).
We recommend that these valuations should also explicitly apply to the maritime sector. Using this valuation, the 103 fatalities in maritime accidents since 1985 constitutes a cost of 2.3 billion SEK. The cost for 430 injuries adds to that. The existing literature concerning valuation of vessel damages is inadequate. This study takes the research field forward by using insurance data to valuate vessel damages. With data from the insurance firm The Swedish Club an econometric analysis is preformed which shows how the cost of an accident depends on the type of accident, the size and the age of the vessel.
The analysis show that the type of ship has no significant impact when the other variables have been controlled for. There are 3,313 accidents involving vessel damages in The Swedish Transport Agency’s database. The vessels in The Swedish Club’s database are on average substantially larger than the vessels in The Swedish Transport Agency’s database. Just 3 percent of the vessels in The Swedish Clubs database has a gross tonnage below 3,000, compared with 77 percent in The Swedish Transport Agency’s database. As a consequence, the results from the econometrics model should not be applied to accidents involving ships with a gross tonnage below 3,000. For smaller ships additional studies are needed with data from ordinary insurance firms.