Oil Spill Risk Management Cycle:From Risk Prevention Analysis to Real Time Accident Forecast

Abstract

The frequent accidental oil in the decades has raised a growing concern on the preparedness and response to spill-induced emergencies.This concern fuelled the implementation of several support tools,including pollution monitoring systems and real time forecast modelling systems.However,in the event of a spill accident that affects coastal resources,each tool is mostly used in a disconnected, ad-hoc fashion,without compliance to the risk management cycle, and often not providing accurate predictions at the right scales duo to computational constraints or unknown local conditions. Risk management systems, successfully applied for tsunamis and dam-break risks, can be used for pollution risks to provide an adequate framework for the effective protection of coastal resources.Recent developments on the modelling systems for coastal problems using high-performance resources provides the potential for their applications to pollution risk analysis, integrated with real time monitoring networks and multi-environment computational plataforms for easy acess to predictions and prevention analysis. A new risk management system is presented herein, combining a multi-scenario risk analysis based on high accuracy oil spill predictions and a new forecast system for oil spill accidents.