Providing Successful Scat Data Management Support During Spill Response
ABSTRACT Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Teams (SCAT) are now used worldwide to assess oiled shorelines as part of response cleanup activities. The amount of SCAT information gathered during surveys can be very large, with the possibility of overwhelming decision makers. New tools are now available to automate the processing of SCAT information. For example, dedicated computerized SCAT data management systems have been used during the Iron Baron (Tasmania) and Kure (California) incidents. More recently, a prototype system was developed by the State of Florida to electronically support all the steps involved in the cleanup phase of an oil spill response. Given this, when should computerized SCAT data management be used and at what level? An analysis of the work performed during recent spills involving SCAT activity provided answers to these questions. Some of the main findings include the following: (1) computerized systems can decrease the time necessary to gather data and increase the accuracy of the captured data; (2) computerized systems decrease the data turnover time and speed up the decision-making cycle; (3) an all-electronic computerized system can become essential in cases where the length of oiled shoreline is very large with respect to the number of SCAT survey teams; (4) for large spills, the increased cost of an all-electronic system may outweigh the cost of not being prepared.