Oil spill modeling: Mapping the knowledge domain

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jake R Nelson ◽  
Tony H Grubesic
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
50Th Anniversary ◽  
Citation Network ◽  
Knowledge Domain ◽  
Santa Barbara ◽  
Oil Spill Modeling ◽  
Offshore Oil ◽  
Future Work

The year 2019 marks the anniversary of two major US offshore oil spills: the 50th anniversary of the Santa Barbara spill and the 30th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez. The consequences of these spills are profound, echoing throughout countless environmental, ecological and social systems. Each spill sparked a flurry of research focusing on the analysis and documentation of spill impacts and responses. The purpose of this progress report is to evaluate oil spill modeling research as a knowledge domain. Using bibliometric analysis techniques, we constructed a co-citation network for exploring key areas of research and seminal papers to highlight the evolution of oil spill research over the past 50 years. The paper concludes with recommendations for future work, detailing the importance of connecting the physical and social sciences for deepening our understanding of oil spills and their broader implications for communities and the environment.

CONTINGENCY PLANNING FOR OFFSHORE OIL SPILLS

1973 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 140
Author(s):  
G. N. Keith
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
First Aid ◽  
Contingency Planning ◽  
Santa Barbara ◽  
Contingency Plan ◽  
Oil Spillage ◽  
Exploration And Production ◽  
Offshore Oil

The incidence of oil spillage from offshore exploration and production activities is comparatively low but the Santa Barbara and Chevron blowouts remind us of what can happen.There are two things each operator can do to help ensure he is prepared in the event of an emergency. First, a comprehensive inhouse contingency plan should be prepared before commencing operations in an area. The plan will ensure that adequate first-aid measures are on hand at all times and will go on to list the location and availability of additional assistance both in equipment and manpower.Second, the operator should be prepared to participate in the oil industry's National Oil Spills Action Plan. This plan is designed to ensure that the entire resources of the industry can be made available and effectively co-ordinated to combat an oil spill anywhere on the coast of Australia.

scholarly journals A Review of River Oil Spill Modeling

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 1620
Author(s):  
Davor Kvočka ◽  
Dušan Žagar ◽  
Primož Banovec
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Detection Techniques ◽  
Weathering Processes ◽  
Advection Dispersion ◽  
Oil Spill Modeling ◽  
Remote Sensing Systems ◽  
Offshore Oil

River oil spills are generally more frequent and pose greater environmental and public health risk than coastal and offshore oil spills. However, the river oil spill research has received a negligible amount of academic attention in the past three decades, while at the same time the coastal and offshore oil spill research has expanded and evolved tremendously. This paper provides the state-of-the-art review of river oil spill modeling and summarizes the developments in the field from 1994 to present. The review has revealed that the majority of the gaps in knowledge still remain. Thus, there is a need for (i) experimental studies in order to develop and validate new models and better understand the main physicochemical processes, (ii) studies on inter-linking of the governing processes, such as hydrodynamics, advection–dispersion, and weathering processes, (iii) adaptation and validation of coastal and offshore oil spill models for applications in riverine environments, and (iv) development of river oil spill remote sensing systems and detection techniques. Finally, there is a need to more actively promote the importance of river oil spill research and modeling in the context of environmental and public health protection, which would form the basis for obtaining more research funding and thus more academic attention.

UNNECESSARILY NEGLECTED IN PLANNING: ILLUSTRATION OF A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO IDENTIFY HUMAN DIMENSION IMPACTS OF MARINE OIL SPILLS

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (02) ◽  
pp. 1250012 ◽  
Author(s):  
FABIENNE LORD ◽  
SETH TULER ◽  
THOMAS WEBLER ◽  
KIRSTIN DOW
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Response ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Damage Assessment ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Contingency Planning ◽  
Human Dimension ◽  
Contingency Plans ◽  
Negative Impacts

Technological hazards research, including that on oil spills and their aftermath, is giving greater attention to human dimension impacts resulting from events and response. While oil spill contingency planners recognize the importance of human dimension impacts, little systematic attention is given to them in contingency plans. We introduce an approach to identifying human dimensions impacts using concepts from hazard and vulnerability assessment and apply it to the Bouchard-120 oil spill in Buzzards Bay, MA. Our assessment covers the spill, emergency response, clean-up, damage assessment, and mid-term recovery. This approach, while still exploratory, did demonstrate that the spill produced a range of positive and negative impacts on people and institutions and that these were mediated by vulnerabilities. We suggest ways in which the framework may help spill managers to learn from events and improve contingency planning by anticipating risks to social systems and identifying strategies to reduce impacts.

A Comprehensive System for Simulating Oil Spill Trajectory and Behaviour in Subsurface and Surface Water Environments

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (1) ◽  
pp. 1251-1266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pu Li ◽  
Haibo Niu ◽  
Shihan Li ◽  
Rodrigo Fernandes ◽  
Ramiro Neves
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Comprehensive System ◽  
Coupled Models ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Integrated Or ◽  
Offshore Oil ◽  
Significant Support ◽  
Oil Droplet Size

Abstract 2017-184: Accidental release of pollutants such as offshore oil spills can cause significant negative impacts on the environment and socio-economy, and constitutes a direct hazard to marine life and human health. Particularly, deepwater blowout released spills are more challenging to study because the trajectory and behaviour of oil are difficult to be comprehensively simulated. Although there are many integrated or coupled models available, there still lacks open source deepwater oil spill models to predict not only the trajectory but also the mass balance of oil. It is the objective of this study to fill this gap by coupling the Texas A&M Oilspill Calculator (TAMOC) for nearfield simulation and the advanced oil spill module in the Modelo Hidrodinâmico (MOHID) 3D Water modeling system. In addition, the Weber number scaling approach is also integrated in both the near- and far-field simulation for oil droplet size prediction. The applicability of the proposed comprehensive system is tested by a case study of simulation of oil spills released from a depth of 3,500 m in the Scotian Shelf, Canada. The results demonstrate a high feasibility of the proposed system. By providing comprehensive simulation for oil spills, the developed system should provide significant support to the response to offshore oil spill, especially from deepwater blowout.

The Refugio Oil Spill Response: Case Study and Lessons’ Learned/Best Practices for the Future

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-123
Author(s):  
Yvonne Najah Addassi ◽  
Julie Yamamoto ◽  
Thomas M. Cullen
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Santa Barbara ◽  
California Department ◽  
Oil Spill Response ◽  
Santa Barbara County ◽  
The U.S

ABSTRACT The Refugio Oil Spill occurred on May 19, 2015, due to the failure of an underground pipeline, owned and operated by a subsidiary of Plains All-American Pipeline near Highway 101 in Santa Barbara County. The Responsible Party initially estimated the amount of crude oil released at about 104,000 gallons, with 21,000 gallons reaching the ocean. A Unified Command (UC) was established consisting of Incident Commanders from the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR), Santa Barbara County, and Plains Pipeline with additional participation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California State Parks. Within hours, the CDFW closed fisheries and the following day Governor Brown declared a state of emergency for Santa Barbara County. The released oil caused heavy oiling of both on and offshore areas at Refugio State Beach and impacted other areas of Santa Barbara and Ventura. A number of factors created unique challenges for the management of this response. In addition to direct natural resource impacts, the closure of beaches and fisheries occurred days before the Memorial Day weekend resulting in losses for local businesses and lost opportunities for the public. The Santa Barbara community, with its history with oil spills and environmental activism, was extremely concerned and interested in involvement, including the use of volunteers on beaches. Also this area of the coast has significant tribal and archeologic resources that required sensitive handling and coordination. Finally, this area of California’s coast is a known natural seep area which created the need to distinguish spilled from ‘naturally occurring’ oil. Most emergency responses, including oil spills, follow a similar pattern of command establishment, response and cleanup phases, followed by non-response phase monitoring, cleanup and restoration. This paper will analyze the Refugio oil spill response in three primary focus areas: 1) identify the ways in which this spill response was unique and required innovative and novel solutions; 2) identify the ways in which this response benefited from the ‘lessons’ learned from both the Deepwater Horizon and Cosco Busan oil spills; and 3) provide a summary of OSPR’s response evaluation report for Refugio, with specific focus on how the lessons learned and best practices will inform future planning efforts within California.

Offshore Oil Spill Incidents: Creating a Database in Brazil

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-30
Author(s):  
Patricia Maggi ◽  
Cláudia do Rosário Vaz Morgado ◽  
João Carlos Nóbrega de Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Guanabara Bay ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Oil And Gas Exploration ◽  
Exploration And Production ◽  
Offshore Oil

ABSTRACT Brazil has performed an important role in the oil and gas industry mainly because its offshore E&P activities. The volume of oil produced in offshore fields had increased 88% in the last decade and correspond to more than 90% of national production. The maritime Exploration and Production (E&P) operations in Brazil started in the middle of the 1970's. In 1981 a law was promulgated to establish a compulsory environmental permit to many activities, including oil and gas exploration and production activities. Although this regulation has existed for over 25 years, only in 1999 was it effectively brought into force to the E&P sector, with the creation of the oil and gas specialized office integrated to the Intituto Brasileiro de Meio Ambiente e Recursos Naturais Renováveis – IBAMA (Brazilian Federal Environmental Agency). On January 2000 Brazil faced one its worst oil spills, in Guanabara Bay. A broken pipeline owned and operated by Petrobras spilt 1300 tone of bunker fuel into Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro. At that time, Brazil had no clear environmental scenario regarding the oil industry in Brazil: uncoordinated environmental regulations, debilitated environmental agencies and a relapse industry took part in the scenario. As a result of the repercussion of the disaster, in the same year was enacted the Federal Law 9966/2000, the so called “Oil Law”, on the prevention, control and inspection of pollution caused by the releasing of oil and other harmful substances in waters under national jurisdiction. The provisions of the Law 9966 included, among other things, the requirement for the notification to the competent environmental authority, the maritime authority and the oil regulating agency, of any incident which might cause water pollution. Although IBAMA receives the oil spill communications since 2001, only in 2010 the Agency began to include this information in a database. This paper discusses the offshore oil spill data received between 2010 and 2012.

A Comparative Study on Emergency Materials and Equipment for Oil Spills

2012 ◽  
Vol 490-495 ◽  
pp. 3039-3043
Author(s):  
Fan Jie Kong ◽  
Ming Xie ◽  
Yu Chen ◽  
Shu Shen Zhang ◽  
Su Ling Liu
Keyword(s):  
Water Pollution ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Shipping Industry ◽  
Ecological Situation ◽  
Import And Export ◽  
And Control ◽  
Offshore Oil ◽  
Increased Pressure

With increasing import and export volumes of oil products in China, port terminals are under increased pressure to prevent water pollution. The prevention of offshore oil spill accidents, and the remedial and control measures for such accidents are one of the most important aspects of maritime management, and are also major issues for the entire shipping industry. This paper describes different emergency materials and equipment for oil spill management and describes the use of these techniques in domestic and international ports. Suggested changes to port emergency materials and equipment are also described, based on the processing capabilities for oil spills in different situations, combined with the port's environmental characteristics and ecological situation

Oil spill modeling

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jake R Nelson ◽  
Tony H Grubesic
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Progress Report ◽  
Oil Spill Modeling ◽  
Significant Research ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Analytical Approaches ◽  
Community Systems

Oil spill modeling is fundamental for planning and preparing for, as well as responding to and mitigating, actual spill events. As a result, significant research effort has been directed toward developing analytical approaches for deepening our understanding of spill risk, community vulnerability, oil behavior, spill outcomes, and impacts. The purpose of this paper is to provide a synthesis of the oil spill risk assessment and impact modeling literature, with a focus on the vulnerability of local environmental, ecological, and community systems, as well as the geographic processes associated with modeling spills and transforming these data into a robust and meaningful impact assessments. The results of this progress report reveal a number of methodological and substantive commonalities across the scientific literature. Moreover, the synthesis of this literature should provide researchers with a strong foundation for pursuing future work in this domain.

scholarly journals DSS-OSM: An Integrated Decision Support System for Offshore Oil Spill Management

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Pu Li ◽  
Bing Chen ◽  
Shichun Zou ◽  
Zhenhua Lu ◽  
Zekun Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Decision Support System ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Support System ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Marine Ecosystem ◽  
Social Economy ◽  
Effective Decision Support ◽  
Management Case Study ◽  
Offshore Oil

The marine ecosystem, human health and social economy are always severely impacted once an offshore oil spill event has occurred. Thus, the management of oil spills is of importance but is difficult due to constraints from a number of dynamic and interactive processes under uncertain conditions. An integrated decision support system is significantly helpful for offshore oil spill management, but it is yet to be developed. Therefore, this study aims at developing an integrated decision support system for supporting offshore oil spill management (DSS-OSM). The DSS-OSM was developed with the integration of a Monte Carlo simulation, artificial neural network and simulation-optimization coupling approach to provide timely and effective decision support to offshore oil spill vulnerability analysis, response technology screening and response devices/equipment allocation. In addition, the uncertainties and their interactions were also analyzed throughout the modeling of the DSS-OSM. Finally, an offshore oil spill management case study was conducted on the south coast of Newfoundland, Canada, demonstrating the feasibility of the developed DSS-OSM.

Oil spill tracking buoy—revolutionising offshore response and recovery

2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 495
Author(s):  
Harry Houridis ◽  
Mellor Peter
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Material Selection ◽  
Deepwater Horizon ◽  
Environmental Damage ◽  
Scientific Instrument ◽  
Surface Currents ◽  
Deep Waters ◽  
Response And Recovery ◽  
Offshore Oil

April 2014 marked the four-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster; a rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers and led to the worst offshore oil spill in US history. Oil gushed from the sea floor for 87 days before the well was capped an estimated 5 million BBL spilled into the Gulf, inflicting untold environmental damage. The event highlighted how little the industry knows about containing deep-water oil spills or about how oil spreads. Oil washed up hundreds of miles away on coastlines in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, but scientists struggled to determine where all of the oil had gone. Had some of it evaporated or was it hiding below the surface? Had it been carried by currents to the Gulf’s deep waters or perhaps even further? No one can say for sure. The resulting science highlighted that oil drifts along the surface of ocean water at 97% of current speed, but at only a fraction of the wind speed. During the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, the tracking buoys sat too proud and were driven the wrong way by the wind. It is essential to track the currents, since they account for at least 95%–98% of the ultimate oil spill trajectory. WorleyParsons designed, developed and deployed an oil spill tracking buoy (OSTB) to provide a scientific instrument for capturing only the surface currents. The specific gravity of each buoy is such that it tracks surface currents. Material selection and manufacture, ocean validation and telecommunication engineers came together to produce such a device, which is largely underwater but can continue to communicate with satellites.

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