The Shipwrecks in Greece are Going Fuzzy: A Study for the Potential of Oil Pollution from Shipwrecks in Greek Waters

This article deals with the development and application of a risk analysis approach regarding the importance and fate of shipwrecks in Greece. In the past few decades the potential harmful effects of wrecks and the materials and substances they carry, remaining on the sea bottom, have been realized and the issue of dealing with them has arisen. The methodology used in this article consists of three steps. The first step is to develop a dedicated database of shipwrecks in Greek waters. The second step focuses on the quasi-quantitative assessment of risk for each shipwreck individually through the introduction of implemented factors that have been modeled into the structure of a hierarchical fuzzy system. The analysis is concluded by determining the sources of uncertainty for the system and implementing an appropriate analysis to determine their relative importance. Finally, geographic information system (GIS) tools are used for the visualization of data and the analysis of results in geographic terms as well as for revealing geographic patterns and relationships.