OILMAP User's Blog

Lagrangian Coherent Structures: Finding Order in the Apparent Chaos of Currents - NY Times

ASA's CJ Beegle-Krause was interviewed by the New York Times for an interesting article about Lagrangian coherent structures.  She also brought in Search and Rescue expert Art Allen of the U.S. Coast Guard to contribute to the story.  Very interesting piece on front page of the New York Times Science section:

Finding Order in the Apparent Chaos of Currents

 

By BINA VENKATARAMAN

Suppose a blob of dioxin-rich pesticide is spilled into Monterey Bay. It might quickly disperse to the Pacific Ocean. But hours later, a spill of the same size at the same spot could circle near the coastline, posing a greater danger to marine life. The briny surface waters of the bay churn so chaotically that a slight shift in the place or time an oil drop, a buoy — or even a person — falls in can dictate whether it is swept out to the open ocean or swirls near the shore.

But the results are not unpredictable. A team of scientists... [read the full article in NYT.com]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/science/29chaos.html?_r=1&ref=science

OILMAP “Spot-On” in Australia Oil Spill

On March 11, Cyclone Hamish whipped up seas off the Queensland coast as the cargo ship Pacific Adventurer lost 250 tons of oil as 31 shipping containers packed with ammonium nitrate fertilizer slipped from its decks in the rough weather.  Some of the 20 foot metal shipping containers punched holes in the cargo ship's hull, allowing its bunker fuel oil to spill into the sea and eventually wash up on beaches nearby onshore.

 

Asia-Pacific ASA’s response was immediate, delivering an oil spill prediction to AMSA (Australian Maritime Safety Authority) within 74 minutes of notification (deadline was 90 minutes).  Using OILMAP™, ASA’s first prediction was spot on.  Oil came ashore very close to where OILMAP predicted.  Brain king from Asia-Pacific ASA’s Gold Coast office continued to provide advice using both OILMAP and CHEMMAP™ over 3 days.  CHEMMAP was used to model the potential release of the ammonium nitrate fertilizer from the sunken containers.  Marine experts have said the fertilizer, if it does leak from the containers in deep water before they are located by AMSA and Navy searchers, will do only minimal environmental damage such as causing small algal blooms.

ASA was also able to demonstrate the use of consensus modeling for the incident, where multiple datasets (NCOM and BLUELINK) were used and fed via ASA’s EDS: Environmental Data Server to run multiple simulations.  Brain King and Asia-Pacific ASA staff working on this has said that they could never have achieved the rapid and accurate results without the fully integrated OILMAP and EDS aggregate environmental data.

For more details on the Pacific Adventurer incident visit the Maritime Safety Queensland site: http://www.msq.qld.gov.au/Home/About_us/Msq_headlines/Questions_answers_pacific_adventurer

or

Queensland Environmental Protection Agency site:

http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/parks_and_forests/park_alerts/pacific_adventurer__oil_spill_incident_off_moreton_island/

A photo gallery of the major oil spill incident is at:

http://tools.goldcoast.com.au/photo-gallery/photo_gallery_popup.php?category_id=4385

 

ASA will soon release more information about the successful consensus modeling techniques applied in this incident.  Other inquiries contact ASA communications director Lee Dooley, ldooley@asascience.com.

ASA’s OILMAP and Environmental Data Server used to Validate Oil Spill Trajectory

On Monday January 26^th, 2009, an oil spill occurred with a tanker serving Shell Sakhalin’s operations in Eastern Russia. Shell Sakhalin is using their OILMAP software with access to ASA’s Environmental Data Server (EDS) to validate the spill event and the oil’s trajectory. Due to the low resolution of the global tidal models in the near shore area, ASA’s Asia-Pacific office developed a local model of tidal currents that can be aggregated with the global current model in order to provide high resolution currents in the area. This allows for better tracking of the oil’s trajectory and fate. This combined product is one of the many offered through ASA’s EDS.