AN ANALYSIS OF THE POLLUTION RISK IN THE MEDITERRANEAN SPANISH COAST

Pollution risks coming from the shipping traffic is one of the real risks that Spanish coast can face. It is much closed the remember of the Fedra bulk carrier in the strait of Gibraltar, the Prestige tanker in Finisterre or the Castor near accident off the Almeria coast. The main objective of this paper is to analyse, identify and further to quantify, the areas in the Mediterranean Spanish coast, with biggest risk of suffering a hydrocarbons spill coming from the tankers maritime traffic. The study, in which this paper is based, has been considered a set of variables among which we can remark the geographic particularities, the climatic issues, the ships’ age or the traffic density; that are going to feed an algorithm. This objective function will weight those different parameters in the entire coast and will identify the ones with the biggest risk probability. The results are going to put in evidence where are the most critical areas in the Spanish coast, when talking about its risk of spill.