Planning for a safe and sustainable decommissioning of offshore hydrocarbon platforms: Complexity and decision support systems. Preliminary considerations

A national decommissioning programme of offshore hydrocarbon platforms, regardless of the total or partial removal hypothesis for further alternative uses, should be based on sustainability and safety principles. In order to carry out this sensitive and complex activity, it is necessary that the competent authorities and operators have, in addition to a relevant regulatory framework, criteria and methodologies that make the assessment of technological options from a safety, social, economic and environmental viewpoints possible. This paper presents a first overview of the study performed on decision support system methodologies with focus on Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA), carried out within the framework of the "Safe and Sustainable Decommissioning (SSD)" project whose goal is to develop a decommissioning program based on the definition of indicators and of objective criteria for removing or converting offshore hydrocarbon platforms.