Human dimension impacts from oil spills and spill response

Project Overview

The history of oil spills clearly demonstrates that they can have significant impacts to both ecological and social systems. While attention is often focused on the ecological impacts of oil spills, the Exxon Valdez, Prestige, Cosco Busan spills, and more recently the Deepwater Horizon leak, have made it apparent that there is a wide variety of human dimensions impacts that are also important for planners and spill response activities to address. Impacts to human physical and mental health, social relationships and activities, economic industries and sectors, cultural systems, infrastructure, public and private organizations, governance and political systems are encompassed in this category.

In spite of their widespread and common occurrence, oil spill contingency plans have not traditionally focused on these kinds of impacts. While state and federal responders foresee and react to human impacts, their knowledge and experience is rarely formalized in contingency plans. Effective spill response can be enhanced by more systematic attention to the range of human dimensions impacts that may arise over the course of a spill event.

In a series of projects we investigated the human dimension impacts from oil spills and spill response by characterizing effects, vulnerabilities, and the adequacy of existing data to inform decision-making.

Specific examples of human dimensions impacts include:

• physical injuries and acute and chronic health effects from exposure to oil and dispersants used in the cleanup;
• mental health impacts from uncertainties about the future;
• economic losses due to disrupted commerce and tourism, including closed fisheries and beaches;
• economic and social costs from litigation;
• disruption of municipal services;
• deterioration of social and civic relationships, including increase of conflict within communities and families, loss of trust responsible parties and government agencies and increase in crime;
• deterioration of quality of life;
• disruption of cultural and spiritual traditions and subsistence ways of life;


Human dimensions impacts from oil spills can result from:

• direct outcomes due to oil in the environment (e.g., acute health risks from inhalation exposures, economic losses from the oiling of vessels, use-losses from the contamination of beaches),

• indirect outcomes due to oil in the environment (e.g., loss of income due to closure of shellfish beds, loss of tourism income because of oil on beaches, loss of income from perceptions of tainted seafood and quality of shoreline, emotional stress from uncertainty about future livelihoods in oiled areas),

• direct outcomes of the response effort (e.g., inconvenience from traffic or ferry closures, social conflict from the unequal treatment of people hired for the response, health effects from accidental inhalation of dispersants), and

• indirect outcomes of the response effort (e.g., ice manufacturers lose income when fishing is banned, higher housing prices due to large influx of cleanup workers, inability of industry to get supplies and material inputs due to closure of a shipping channel).

 

In our first project we developed a framework for response planning to guide the selection of metrics for assessing spill responses by a broad range of potentially affected and interested parties. To achieve this over-arching project goal we organized the project around a series of literature review and empirical research activities to:

  1. characterize the objectives that stakeholders desire to achieve by oil spill response and upon which performance assessments should be based;

  2. characterize the features of good performance metrics;

  3. identify the kinds of performance metrics that have been proposed to assess oil spill response performance and the challenges of applying them in assessments of particular spill responses;

  4. develop a framework by which performance metrics may be compared and selected.


In our second project we identified socially disruptive effects from oil spills and spill response activities and characterized the factors that shape the vulnerabilities of communities to stresses associated with oil spills and spill response activities. We studied multiple marine oil spills, including the impacts from the Exxon Valdez 25 years after the accident, a spill in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, and a spill outside of New Orleans.  We developed guidance and a review of existing datasets [ST2] that can inform planning, and tools for Area Planning Committees to systematically assess the potential health, social, economic, institutional, and cultural impacts of oil spills by:

• constructing spill scenarios that appropriately test response activities for human dimensions impacts;

• identifying and prioritize human dimensions impacts that must be addressed, including downstream social and economic consequences that can arise from both spills and spill response activities; 

• characterizing the vulnerabilities of individuals, groups, communities, and economic industries and sectors to impacts; and

• identifying effective response actions that can prevent or mitigate impacts and vulnerabilities. 

Projects

Social disruption from oil spills and spill response: Characterizing effects, vulnerabilities, and the adequacy of existing data to inform decision-making. Coastal Response Research Center (under NOAA Grant Number: NA04NOS4190063).

Cordova Study Site – Social disruption from oil spills and spill response. Oil Spill Recovery Institute. 

Successful collaborative planning for oil spill response readiness. Coastal Response Research Center (under NOAA Grant Number: NA04NOS4190063).

Establishing Performance Metrics for Oil Spill Response, Recovery and Restoration. Coastal Response Research Center (under NOAA Grant Number: NA04NOS4190063, Project Number: 05-983).

Publications     

Lord, F., Tuler, S., Webler, T., and Dow, K. 2012. Human dimensions of the Bouchard-120 oil spill in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management 14(2)

Webler, T. and Lord, F. 2010. Planning for the Human Dimensions of Oil Spills and Spill Response, Environmental Management 45:723–738

Tuler, S., Webler, T., and Dow, K. 2010. Guidance for Human Dimensions Impact and Vulnerability Assessments in Marine Oil Spill Contingency Planning. SERI Report 10-00s. Greenfield, MA: Social and Environmental Research Institute, Inc.

Tuler, S. and Webler, T. 2009. Comparing stakeholders’ objectives for oil spill contingency planning and response:  A Q study of four regions, Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 17(2): 95-107.

Tuler, S., Seager, T., Kay, R., and Linkov, I. 2007.  The Bouchard-120 and Chalk Point oil spill responses:  Objectives and performance metrics.  In I. Linkov, G. Kiker, and R. Wenning (eds.), Environmental security in harbors and coastal areas, pp. 209-228.  Netherlands:  Springer.

Dow, K., Lord, F., Tuler, S., & Webler, T. 2010. Report on databases and tools available to assess vulnerabilities of human communities to oil spills. SERI Report 10-004. Greenfield, MA: Social and Environmental Research Institute, Inc.

Dow, K., Lord, F., Tuler, S., & Webler, T. 2010. Technical appendix on databases available to assess vulnerabilities of human communities to oil spills. SERI Report 10-005. Greenfield, MA: Social and Environmental Research Institute, Inc.