The model of risk assessment of greywater discharges from the Danube River ships

Abstract

Having in mind the immense value of the Danube River and knowing that risk assessment of its pollution is one of the key elements for ecology and the health of people in its region, in this paper we emphasized the importance of risk assessment of ship-generated wastewater – particularly in the case of greywater discharges. Although, a number of methods for measuring and analysing different environmental risks have been developed, previous research shows that the failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) method is applicable in solving environmental issues. Therefore, we conducted our research with the main purpose to develop a model of FMEA method application for assessing the risks of ship-generated greywater discharges based on estimated data for total quantity of greywater, the size of the exposed population to the pollution of greywater and the possibilities of this pollution detection. Risk analysis was performed on official data for nine ports on the Danube River on inland waterways of the Republic of Serbia. Based on the obtained results, we concluded that measures, recommendations and risk prevention strategies for ship-generated greywater discharges should go into two major directions: (1) decreasing the pollution caused by greywater discharges; (2) increasing the number of water quality monitoring stations.

Keywords:

• The Danube River
• greywater discharges
• FMEA

Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technological Development, the Republic of Serbia, Project numbers: TR35045 and III44007.