Developed to assist port authorities in identifying environmental issues and in assessing their significance. TEAP can be used by any type of port authority or port company willing to implement a systematic and scientific-based method to identify its Significant Environmental Aspects.
Questions this practice may help answer
- What are the key environmental aspects related to a port authority’s activities? What is the significance of these environmental aspects?
- How can common criteria for the environmental management system standards such as ISO 14001, PERS and EMAS be devised?
Implementation Context
The Tool for the identification and assessment of Environmental Aspects in Ports (TEAP) has been developed as part of the PERSEUS project. It is used for the purposes of assisting port authorities in the identification of Significant Environmental Aspects (SEA) and in the assessment of their salience. The tool addresses the need to unify approaches across the South European Seas (the Mediterranean and Black Seas) for the identification of environmental aspects to meet environmental management system standards such as ISO 14001, PERS and EMAS. This is a challenge for all port authorities in the region, who need to meet certain standards with respect to legislative and regulatory obligations. In addition, the tool will help improve the quality of the environment in the ports’ areas by emphasizing the crucial environmental issues.
Aspects / Objectives
- Assist port authorities in the identification of Significant Environmental Aspects;
- Assist port authorities in the assessment of Significant Environmental Aspects;
- Consolidate methods of achieving environmental management system standards;
- Help improve the quality of the environment in the ports and in the surrounding areas.
Method
The Tool for the identification and assessment of Environmental Aspects in Ports (TEAP) is a user-friendly platform that is based online. It is confidential and no information collected during its use is transferred to third parties. The tool represents a 5-step procedure, which the port authorities normally complete in 30 minutes. The stages are the following:
- Step 1 (Port contact details): The person using the tool provides the contact details for the port authority, which he/she represents;
- Step 2 (Port activities): This step aims at identifying the activities carried out in the port. A large checklist of possible port activities is provided and the user has to select the ones that apply to his/her port. The selection of a particular activity results in the inclusion of the environmental aspects that are associated with that activity;
- Step 3 (Environmental aspects): This step provides a list of environmental aspects that are associated with the port activities selected in Step 2, ranking them from high to low occurrence. The list includes only Significant Environmental Aspects for the respective port, meaning that only the environmental aspects with a score equal to or higher than the threshold value of 50% of the maximum score are included;
- Step 4 (Application of criteria): The significance of the environmental aspects, identified at the previous stage, is assessed by means of the application of pre-defined criteria. The TEAP guides the user to determine the most significant aspects, whereby each of the criteria are attributed a weight between 1 and 5;
- Step 5 (Significant Environmental Aspects): In this last step the tool generates a final list of Significant Environmental Aspects (SEAs) specific to the respective port authority.
Source: www.perseus-net.eu/assets/media/PDF/EU_Maritime_Day_May2015/4259.pdf
Main Outputs / Results
The main output of the TEAP is a list of Significant Environmental Aspects (SEAs) specific to the port authority represented by the user and consistent with a common set of criteria. The tool calculates an average value for each identified environmental aspect and provides an ordered ranking in accordance with the scoring system applied in Step 4 of the procedure. There is a threshold that defines the Significant Environmental Aspects, which corresponds to an average score of 3 points or more.
Transferability
The TEAP can be transferred into other context in a relatively straightforward manner. The only requirement is that the tool is adjusted to the legislative and regulatory requirements prevalent in the respective region that it is expected to cover. Otherwise, the general approach to the identification and assessment of environmental aspects is fully transferrable and can be used in other contexts.
Readjustments of the TEAP need to take into consideration that different locations have different environmental profiles, therefore the pre-defined criteria for the assessment of environmental aspects need to be carefully reviewed and analysed and, if necessary, amended.
Contact Person
Prof. Rosa Mari Darbra Roman
Universitat Politecnica De Catalunya, Spain
E-mail: rm.darbra
upc.edu (rm[dot]darbra[at]upc[dot]edu)
Responsible Entity
PERSEUS: Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC)
Costs / Funding Source
Direct costs of this practice elaboration are unknown.