Search for European Projects

OIL SPILL PREVENTION AND RESPONSE AT LOCAL SCALES (SPRES)
Start date: Jan 8, 2012, End date: Jul 8, 2014 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The main aims of this project are to: (i) develop a set of high resolution operational oceanographic systems in several estuaries or ports located in the Atlantic Area, and (ii) establish local oil spill response plans for these local areas based on risk assessment. This work will apply to estuaries all along the European Atlantic coast region. The project partners have been chosen to represent the full range of coastal and hydrological conditions. The methodologies and techniques developed will be applied to sites with physical, biological and socio-economical characteristics that make them highly vulnerable to oil spill. This project creates a transnational multi -disciplinary co-operation across 8 main project partners of four countries of the Atlantic Area (Spain, Portugal, France and United Kingdom), with the aim of address ing common problems and solutions regarding the enhancing the marine and coastal environment sustainability. A combined effort between the partner countries will allow achieving a much greater progress than separate country actions, thus establishing common standard that will contribute to the improvement of interconnections between territories. Although the core partners are research institutes, the match funder s and sponsors include regional, government and environmental authorities. The stakeholders will contribute in ensuring that the results and findings are taken up by end users. Achievements: AVEIRO LAGOONA high-resolution operational oceanographic platform is available for Aveiro Lagoon (RDFS-SPRES: http://ariel.lnec.pt/spres/). In addition to the hydrodynamic forecast, this platform provides oil spill forecasts for 6 pre-defined locations, which were chosen due to be more prone for accidents (navigational routes, harbour structures, hydrocarbons product terminal). SANTANDER BAYA web platform made up of two components: (1) An operational system (HR-OOS) and (2) an oil spill risk assessment system (HR-OSRAS) is available for Santander Bay (http://spres.ihcantabria.es/). The HR-OOS provides decision makers with short-term (within 48 hours) oil spill trajectory forecasting.BELFAST LOUGHA high Resolution (46 m) Operational Oceanographic System in Belfast Lough is near completion, and is composed of two components: (1) the HR operational oceanographic module, based on a bespoke Delft-3D hydrodynamic model, and (2) the HR oil spill forecast module, based on the oil spill model, TESEO. The system receives daily ocean and meteorological forcings from the European initiative MyOcean and the UK Meteorological Office, and provides two-day forecasts of sea level, currents, salinity and temperature based on numerical modelling. This web application allows end users to easily access the forecast and to launch the oil spill model to estimate the oil spill trajectories and fate both in case of pollution threat and for training purposes. In addition, new instrumentation has been installed on Pile 8 within the Inner Lough, and plans are to embed a data-feed from these instruments showing live plots of temperature, salinity, sea level and meteorological readings.FALMOUTH PORTOperational Oceanographic System (OOS) based of Delft3D code was implemented in this study area. Currently, daily forecasts of currents, salinity and water temperature in this area are available at a web portal. The system receives daily meteorological and ocean forcings from European and UKs organizations and provides 36 hours forecasts. Data such as Falmouth bathymetry data and tide gauge information was sent to technical partners for input into the models. Real time data on wind, water elevation and currents (between others parameters) are also available through the website.RISK ASSESSMENT SYSTEMSAs part of the web platforms developed in each site, risk assessment systems are currently being implemented. This risk assessment system will allow user to make an assessment using pre-run cases (previously defined as oil spill scenarios) and the assessed vulnerability carried out for each site, given a hypothetic oil spill in a given location. These systems will be the basis for proposing protection and clean up plans. Fig 5 shows an example of a vulnerability map.PROTECTION AND CLEANUP PLANSAs it has been previously done for Santander Bay and Aveiro Lagoon in March 2013, shore surveys were completed in Falmouth Harbour - Falmouth estuary and Belfast Lough to identify the different shoreline types and ecological sensitivity. This data will be used to define protection feasibility and appropriate clean-up techniques. Meetings with Harbour representatives were organised for each site by the responsible partner and allowed to improve knowledge of oil spill preventive measures defined in local contingency plans, measures in place and to visit to some of the existing oil pollution stockpiles.more information on achievements is available on the projects web site: http://spres.ihcantabria.com

Looking for a partnership?
Have a look at
Ma Région Sud!
https://maregionsud.up2europe.eu

Coordinator

Details

  • 53.9%   626 436,00
  • 2007 - 2013 Atlantic Area
  • Project on KEEP Platform
Project Website

7 Partners Participants