Abstract
The tragic Gulf of Mexico accident in April, 2010 can be marked as the defining moment which confirmed the idea for making a subsea Blowout Preventer (BOP) risk model.
The accident showed that society is our biggest stakeholder with its own risk acceptance perception, enabled by the immediacy of social-media, the tenacity of the press, and today’s instantaneous technology for transmitting newsworthy and life-altering events.
When thinking back to that day in April, we can ask: what does the majority of society remember about this tragedy? The most common answer to this question is the graphic photos of massive amounts of oil washing up on once pristine Gulf beaches, killing fish, birds, and other ancillary industries which rely on clean Gulf waters and beaches to survive. Although not pictured with such detail, the casualties will never be forgotten either.
