Keywords

8.1 Introduction

The total length of the Malaysia coastline is about 4600 km [1]. Malaysian water comprises more than 500,000 square km [1]. Thus, it is inevitably visible to high risks especially with an increase in shipping activities [1]. The registered Malaysian ships and foreign-registered ships calling at Malaysian ports have been recorded as more than 75,000 in 2017 [1]. The heavy and developing shipping activities reveal to a potential accident risk which precedes to oil and chemical spills. It has produced a negative effect, harm to our marine environment, and create destruction in the Malaysian waters [1]. Malaysia requires to follow the rule set by the Environmental Quality Act [EQA] 1974, Section 47 [2] and the Exclusive Economic Zone [EEZ] Act 1984 [1]. When there is an oil spill incident occurring, every single oil spill shall be reported to the Director-General [DG] of the DOE [3]. The EEF geographical coverage in NOSCP [3] is shown in Fig. 8.1.

Fig. 8.1
figure 1

The EEZ geographical coverage in NOSCP [DOE, 2014]

There are several types of pollution such as pollution of air, noise, water, soil, light, thermal, and radiation. This research aims at water pollution that entails the oil spill. Pollution creates damage and disturbs several groups for instance environment, human, marine life [4]. Pollution is known as a global or universal challenge as it comprises numerous nations and influences human health. Any oil ship emissions that signifies severe hazard to the marine environment caused marine pollution [5]. The environmental pollution includes human and maritime actions and triggers challenges for the environment and leads to health crisis [6]. Many causes contribute to marine pollution, affect marine life, and produce serious harm to ecosystems and defeat human society [7]. The oil spill occurred due to the negligence of human error or technical error [8].

8.2 Literature Review

  1. A.

    Cases of Oil Spill Incidents at Johor

There are 73 oil spill cases that happened in Malaysia from 2014 to 2017 as shown in Table 8.1 [3]. Out of 73 cases mostly happened at Johor by 24 cases as shown in Table 8.2. Meanwhile, the causes were from several factors such as unknown sources, ship collision, releasing the oil to the sea, the problem of engine oil, pipeline leakage, loading and unloading activity, oil digging, shipwreck, and cutting activity of vessels. The oil spill incidents at Johor were declared for tier 1 and tier 2 levels. It has reported 6 cases that happened due to ship collision as shown in Table 8.3.

Table 8.1 The oil spill cases in Malaysia waters form 2014 to 2017 [3]
Table 8.2 Summary of oil spill cases at Johor state form 2014 to 2017 [3]
Table 8.3 The ship collision incidents for Malaysia from 2014 to 2017 [3]

Oil spill incidents occurred at several places such as (a) Pelabuhan Tanjung Pelepas, (b) Kampong Tanjung Buai, Kota Tinggi, (c) Pengerang Terminal, Kota Tinggi, (d) Sungai Buntu, Pengerang, (e) Pengerang Kota Tinggi, (f) Jetty 4 ATT Tanjung Bin, (g) Horshburgh, Pulau Batu Putih, (h) Tanjung Piai, Pontian, (i) Bandar Penawar Kota Tinggi, (j) Perairan Tanjung Piai, (k) Terminal ATB, Sungai Pulai, (l) Pulau Tengah Mersing, (m) Pelabuhan Pasir Gudang, (n) Pulau Pemanggil, Mersing, (o) Rapid Pengerang, (p) Timur Laut Tompok Utara, Johor Timur, and (q) Parit Jawa, Muar [3].

  1. B.

    Oil Spills Factors

The oil spill occurs either intentionally or accidentally and affects many areas and parties. Most of the cases of marine environments are made by humans either intentionally or unintentionally [9]. The existence of the oil spill happened due to technical errors or human errors [10,11,12]. The technical error involves machinery or equipment, the fitness for service [FFS] of the fire-damage pressure vessel [13]. Meanwhile, the human error encompasses fatigue among crews, and ergonomic challenges from tons of work onboard and unsafe behavior [14]. It also could happen due to problems of vessel situation, ocean/coast environment, human errors, and emergency mechanisms [15]. The oil spill triggers detriment to several groups since the oil spill is able to circulate in a quick period due to added factor. There are several factors which affect the oil spill such as wind velocity, sea condition, current and tides, temperature, and atmospheric conditions [16]. Oil spill creates and it has threatened the side of the ocean and marine life. The spilled oil covers chemical ingredients that trigger destructiveness to life and human life. Several varieties of aquatic life are vulnerable when intermingling with spilled oil [17]. Once the oil pollutes the ocean, marine life could perish due to pollution. It also provides a long impact to the economy, human health, wildlife, marine ecosystem, marine animal, plant life, local industries, vegetation, and mangrove [10,11,12, 15, 18,19,20].

  1. C.

    Ship Collision

A ship collision is the main type of marine accident [19]. Generally, the ship crash contains two substances either one a smacked vessel and a crashing object or two vessels crash to each other [21]. The crash is described as either one top-on or a side crash; the basic response varies significantly on comparative stance [21]. There are several factors related to shipping collisions. The factors are: (a) the property of crash: crash with a firm body, offshore platforms, or alternative vessels; (b) the power of the crash: speediness, dislocation, bow ship, draft, and comparative of the crashing vessels, (c) state of uncovered vessels: dislocation, draft, speediness, and comparative azimuth, (d) environmental circumstances: wind, waves, and current, and (e) volume of vessels construction in allowing the crash [21]. It is also known as the ship being surpassed by an additional vessel on a parallel track. The duration of the period for which a ship is subjected to risk and the possibility of a collision through a surpassing confront is also important. At sea in fog, ships frequently surpass severely close and this could lead to ship collision [21].

  1. D.

    Skip Operation

Several factors lead to ship collision from ship operations. The specific effect weight shall be considered as the effect load instigated by an involuntary crash by the highest permitted service vessel in everyday business (9). Alternatively, the ship crash probability is due to (a) competency defects of the crew, (b) observation carelessness, (c) nonuse or improper use of the radar, (d) improper use due to dependency on VHF, (e) wrong judgment of the situation, (f) too few duty crew members to deal with the current situation, (g) ship occupies other ships’ courses, (h) breaking local or international collision avoidance rules, (i) slow avoidance, (j) operation errors of the pilot, (k) sudden electric cutoff of rudder gear or the main engine, (l) abnormal off course environment or natural environment, and (m) chaotic traffic condition [22].

  1. E.

    Ship Design

Ship design is known as a complicated effort involving the efficient direction of numerous subjects, of equally technical and non-technical description, and individual specialists disembark at significant design results [23]. The design of the ship or vessel is important [23]. The Oil Pollution Act 1990 [OPA 1990] and the International Convention on Prevention of Pollution from Ships [MARPOL] have included a hull configuration of oil tankers. OPA 1990 and MARPOL 1973/1978 discussed the double hull as essential in avoiding oil spills [24], highlighting the construction of a vessel with double hulls concerning the costs. The benefit of building double hulls includes a decrease in the oil spill. The drawback of building this double hull involves cost force for the construction and operation costs of double hulls. The need for building the double hulls have expanded even not all parties agree as it requires a supplementary cost in improving this double hulls design.

8.3 Methodology

  1. A.

    Survey Method

This research involved the questionnaire dissemination method. The closed-ended questionnaires were circulated among respondents. A pilot test has been performed to verify the validity, reliability, and insight into the questions. The questionnaires contained four sections such as Section A: for detailed information of respondents which consists of general information such as gender, age, working experiences, and current position in the company. Meanwhile for Section B: covers on the two elements of the precaution steps in preventing ship collisions. A Likert scale of 1–5, which implies: 1—strongly disagree, 2—disagree, 3—neutral, 4—agree and 5—strongly agree, was used to express opinion among respondents to the desired questions [25]. The Likert scale questionnaire was established in 1932 [26] to evaluate viewpoints and the standard Likert scale is 5 or 7 points ordinal magnitude utilized by respondents to measure the extent to which they reach an agreement or argue with a report [27]. The questionnaire consists of 22 items, at which 11 items were used to measure the ship operations and 11 items to measure the ship design.

  1. B.

    Population, Sample, and Respondents

The sample for this research contains 70 individuals, which covered staff at one port, former experienced staff in the oil spill, and nearby residents at the related port. The sample was derived utilizing descriptive research for the sample, which has to be between 10 and 20% from the total population [28]. 70 questionnaires were delivered, and 53 responses obtained. The total response rate was 75.71%. Meanwhile, 17 respondents or 24.29% of respondents were unsuccessful to return within the required questionnaire dissemination were not available during the distribution of the questionnaire. The breakdown is shown in Table 8.4 and the summary of the respondents is given in Table 8.6, respectively.

Table 8.4 Population, sample, and respondents
  1. C.

    The Theoretical Framework

The anticipated conceptual theoretical framework of the research which includes three effective precaution steps from the ship crash is illustrated in Fig. 8.2.

Fig. 8.2
figure 2

Theoretical framework

8.4 Data Analysis and Discussion

  1. A.

    Reliability Test of the Pilot Test

A pilot test was organized among the industrial-experienced staff of the maritime institution in Lumut, Perak, and staff of the related Port Authority and Port company. Table 8.5 reveals the Cronbach’s alpha of the pilot questionnaire for 19 elements at 0.636. The two questions that gave a Cronbach’s alpha lower than 0.5 have been removed. The range of the Cronbach’s alpha was from 0.500 to 0.636.

Table 8.5 Reliability statistics
  1. B.

    Respondents Demographic

The summary of the respondents demographic is shown in Table 8.6.

Table 8.6 Summary of the respondent demographic
  1. C.

    The Efficiency of Ship Operations

Table 8.7 shows that ship operations are an effective approach to avoid the ship from a crash that leads to oil pollution. The residual value for efficiency is at 25.5. It implies the leading value is the outcome where the ship operations are an effective protection step to avoid the ship to crash. The test statistics in Table 8.8 show the significant value which has 0.000 and is below the P-value.

Table 8.7 The efficiency of ship operations
Table 8.8 Test statistics for ship operation
  1. D.

    The Efficiency of Ship Design

Table 8.9 states that ship design is an effective approach to avoid the ship from the crash. The residual value for efficiency is at 20.5. It indicates the main value that the ship design is an effective protection measure to avoid the ship from the crash. Table 8.10 indicates the significant value at 0.000 and is below the P-value.

Table 8.9 The efficiency of ship design
Table 8.10 Test statistics for ship design

8.5 Conclusion

Between these two important elements in avoiding the ship from the crash, it shows that ship operations are the most important criteria to be focused. The ship operations such as changing courses in a combat condition are the extremely prominent variable, supported by variables for instance the officer of the watch action, condition evaluation, hazard discovery, individual situation, and exhaustion [29]. The smallest ship operations prominent variables include additional interruptions on the bridge, bridge observation, maintenance schedules, and officer’s exhaustion [29]. Nevertheless, the element of the ship design is the second element to be the focus after the ship operations in avoiding the ship from the crash which leads to the oil spill incidents. Thus, the objective of this research has been accomplished.