Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 6
Application of a Numerical Statistical
Model to Estimate Potential Oil Spill Risk
Weijun Guo and Tiaojian Xu
Abstract
Both deterministic and probabilistic strategies are employed in numerical
oil spill model to estimate potential oil spill risk. The deterministic model simulates
transport and weathering processes by means of a particle tracking method. While
a Monte Carlo stochastic simulation approach is run for multiple scenarios, spill
size, oil type, and environmental conditions (meteorological and hydrological data)
combinations, to characterize the consequences of spills for a specified potential spill
location. The statistically-defined oil spill map does not demonstrate the probabilities
of oil-slick presence for each grid area, but also provide the information of the shortest
arrival time which is quite vital for oil contingency plan.
6.1 Introduction
Oil spills has been a worldwide problem and are regarded as one of the most critical
forms of marine pollution, bringing high risks to the open and coastal seas. Oil spill
risk analysis is an area of research that becomes more and more important, especially
after the Deepwater Horizon oil platform accident [
10
], due to the ever-increasing
demand for fossil fuels. The transport and fate of spilled oil in themarine environment
is affected by several dynamics processes, such as: the mechanical spreading, advec-
tion, turbulent diffusion, natural dispersion, sedimentation, resurfacing, stranding,
evaporation, emulsification, dissolution, photo-oxidation, and biodegradation. The
Lagrangian tracking method has been widely used to predict the motion of numerous
individual oil particles, meanwhile the weathering model consisting of algorithms
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