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XXXVIII Convegno Nazionale di Idraulica e Costruzioni Idrauliche
Reggio Calabria, Settembre 2022
NEW ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK FOR ENHANCING
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION FROM OIL SPILLS IN THE ADRIATIC
Svitlana Liubartseva 1*, Antonio Augusto Sepp-Neves 1, Giovanni Coppini 1, Francesco Ronco 2, Giusi Pastore 2,
Giuseppe Verdiani 2, Mariantonietta Pinto 3 Ivana Caputo 2, Rita Lecci 1, & Teresa Mungari 2
(1) Ocean Predictions and Applications Division, Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (Lecce, Bologna)
(2) Civil Protection Department of Puglia Region (Bari)
(3) Orange Public Management srl (Ostuni)
*email: svitlana.liubartseva@cmcc.it
KEY POINTS
• Oil spill accidents and operational pollution.
• Innovative technology platform.
• MEDSLIK-II oil spill model.
• Meteo-oceanographic forecast.
• Hazard from dispersal of oil along shipping lanes.
INTRODUCTION
Growing reliance on oil and oil-based products in everyday activity stimulates both oil transportation and
exploration of hydrocarbon reservoirs in the Adriatic Sea, which poses a potential threat of oil spills. To
increase cross-border effectiveness in tackling accidental and operational oil spills, the oil detection and
monitoring services should be combined with modeling tools and products that predict the transport and
consequences of the spills. To this end, an innovative analytical framework is developing in the FIRESPILL
1
Project (Fostering Improved Reaction of cross-border Emergency Services and Prevention Increasing safety
LeveL) funded under the Interreg V-A Italy-Croatia CBC 2014-2020 programme (AP2 – Security and
Resilience).
FIRESPILL overall objective is to enhance the capacity of Emergency Service Organizations to increase
cross-border effectiveness in tackling natural and man-made disasters, decreasing the exposure of the
populations and environment to the impact of hazards and increasing the safety of the Croatian and Italian
Adriatic basin by strengthening emergency prevention and management measures and instruments. Project
joint activities will be implemented per each risk taken into consideration, aiming at: (a) the improvements of
existing Emergency Services Regulatory System; (b) the reinforcement of Emergency Management Systems
(EMS) in terms of new and innovative solutions; and (c) the activation of citizens' participatory process.
The developed analytical framework comprises a fully operational 24/7 web-based application that predicts
the oil drift using the advanced oil spill modeling tool integrated with meteo-oceanographic datasets. A user-
friendly graphical interface includes the necessary set of parameters in order to obtain the oil spill forecast,
visualize the meteo-oceanographic conditions at the spill scene, make decisions and disseminate them among
the members of a response team. The application meets the real-time requirements in terms of performance
and dynamic service delivery. Comprehensive computational resources and network bandwidth efficiently
support the multi-user regime and independent processing of user requests.
Although accidental oil spills rarely occurred in the Adriatic Sea, operational discharges have progressively
been identified as the main source of pollution from vessels including bilge water dumping, releases of oily
ballast water from fuel tanks, heavy fuel oil sludges, etc., (Perkovic et al., 2016). The Adriatic Sea is host to a
large diversity of shipping fleets: fishing vessels, cruise ships, ro-ro ferries, leisure crafts, cargo and passenger
ships, container carriers, tankers, tugs and towing that might contribute to operational oil pollution at sea. As
was shown in recent publications on the satellite-derived monitoring (Raphael et al., 2021; Polinov et al.,
2021), the basin is significantly affected by this phenomenon. Although the quantity of oil in a particular
1
https://www.italy-croatia.eu/web/firespill
S. Liubartseva et al. – New analytical framework for enhancing environmental protection from oil spills …
release is rather small (from a few liters for a small leisure craft to a few cubic meters for the larger ships)
operational oil spill pollution has immediate adverse biological effects, and its chronic nature is likely to affect
marine ecosystem functioning (Brussaard et al., 2016). In this context, hazard maps from dispersal of oil along
shipping lanes are obtained by means of stochastic oil spill simulations to represent the chronic pollution of
the Adriatic waters and coastlines associated with operational oil spills.
WEB-BASED APPLICATION
The FIRESPILL oil spill forecasting platform (Figure 1) is being developed in association with the
Protezione Civile – Regione Puglia addressing their specific requirements. Oil spill forecasts have to be
“timely” delivered, predicting the spill trajectory and fate in the following days within minutes following the
event identification. Additionally, predictions should be reliable and delivered at the problem scale (e.g.,
beach, province or country). Finally, forecasted spill maps should be disseminated in electronic format
compatible with widely used GIS software.
Figure 1. Snapshot of the FIRESPILL forecasting system showing scenario and model setup variables on the left sidebar and interactive
map on the viewport.
The platform incorporates the MEDSLIK-II oil spill model (De Dominicis et al., 2013), a freely available
community oil spill model
2
. By discretizing the oil slick into constituent parcels, the model simulates
advection-diffusion and oil weathering processes including spreading, evaporation, natural dispersion, and
emulsification. Shoreline interactions represent the adsorption of oil into the coastal environment, including a
probability that some part may be washed back into the water.
“Timely” delivered forecasts were achieved with the FIRESPILL platform by simplifying the construction,
simulation and visualization of spill scenarios through an interactive web-based interface. The Graphical User
Interface (GUI) allows the end-user to describe the spill (i.e., volume of oil spilled, oil density, spill date,
duration, and position) as well as quickly configure the oil spill model (e.g., horizontal and vertical diffusivity
coefficients, number of particles, etc.) and launch a simulation. Animated oil spill maps expressing oil
concentrations at sea surface and on shorelines can be visualized at GUI a few minutes after a simulation
request is submitted or downloaded in common GIS format.
To predict the oil spill drift and weathering, MEDSLIK-II relies on realistic currents, winds and water
temperature fields supplied by operational meteo-oceanographic forecasting systems. Forecast reliability in
the FIRESPILL platform was achieved employing peer-reviewed, continuously quality controlled and FAIR
3
meteo-oceanographic products. Forecasted ocean fields at multiple spatial resolutions, ranging 150 m – 9 km,
are available to users offering inter-model comparisons and, mainly, answer at the desired scale (see Table 1).
Ocean fields are supplied by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) and CMCC.
2
http://medslik-ii.org
3
https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/
S. Liubartseva et al. – New analytical framework for enhancing environmental protection from oil spills …
Wind forecasts at high resolution, 1/10º, are available from a single source, the European Centre for Medium-
Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). For over 10 years, MEDSLIK-II has been successfully employed to
track actual oil spills around the globe.
Meteo-oceanographic products
Spatial
resolution
Area coverage
Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service
(CMEMS)
GLOBAL OCEAN 1/12° PHYSICS ANALYSIS AND
FORECAST UPDATED DAILY
1/12 degree
(~9km)
Global
Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service
(CMEMS)
MEDITERRANEAN SEA PHYSICS ANALYSIS AND
FORECAST
1/24 degree
(~4.5km)
Mediterranean Sea
Centro euroMediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC)
Southern Adriatic Northern Ionian coastal Forecasting System
(SANIFS)
150m–9km
Southern Adriatic and
Ionian seas
European Center of Mid-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF)
High Resolution Atmospheric Forecast
1/10 degree
(~11km)
Global
Table 1. Summary of the meteo-oceanographic products used as inputs for oil spill simulations at the FIRESPILL forecasting platform.
OIL SPILL HAZARD ASSOCIATED WITH OPERATIONAL OIL POLLUTION FROM VESSELS
In view of the current situation and the expected increase in ship traffic in the Adriatic, it is mandatory to
map the probability of exposure of local marine and coastal resources to oil pollution conditions. The
methodology of hazard mapping suggested in Liubartseva et al. (2015) appears to be the most appropriate way
to approach the management of oil pollution in marine and coastal areas in order to sustain marine ecosystem
health.
Hazard refers to the likelihood that any particular area will be affected by a destructive event within a given
period of time (UNESCO, 1972). Operational oil spill pollution along shipping routes causes a fluctuating
hazard with a magnitude that changes dynamically as a result of several external parameters that vary in space
and time (e.g., sea currents, waves, wind, sea surface temperatures).
The methodology is based on using vessel density distributions as the sources of virtual oil spills in the
stochastic MEDSLIK-II simulations forced by high resolution meteo-oceanographic datasets. After the
definition of the hypothetical oil spill ensemble members (starting longitudes and latitudes, dates, volumes and
types of spilled oil) representative statistics is gained that allows us to take into consideration the intrinsic
variability of the marine environment.
In the framework of the FIRESPILL Project, the methodology of oil pollution hazard mapping has been
upgraded by using the advanced products, datasets, and esteems in comparison with our previous work
(Liubartseva et al., 2015). Currently, the shipping lanes in the Adriatic are represented more accurately by
means of the vessel density maps 2017–2020 provided by the EMODnet Human Activities
4
. The coastal type
data downloaded from the EMODnet Geology Portal
5
are incorporated in the MEDSLIK-II model, which
makes modeling the oil beaching and washing off in the Adriatic to be more realistic. The transport and
transformation of oil are forced by the CMEMS operational oceanography fields (Clementi et al., 2021) and
the ECMWF winds with a higher resolution than previously.
Starting MEDSLIK-II stochastic simulations, we expect that the hazard patterns will correspond to the oil
source distributions shaped by the climatological manifestations of the Adriatic currents. A preliminary hazard
map from dispersal of oil along shipping lanes in probability terms is shown in Figure 2.
4
https://www.emodnet-humanactivities.eu/view-data.php
5
https://www.emodnet-geology.eu/map-viewer/
S. Liubartseva et al. – New analytical framework for enhancing environmental protection from oil spills …
Figure 2. The preliminary representation of an averaged 2017–2020 hazard map at the sea surface.
The values range between 0 and 1, where 1 indicates maximum hazard and 0 no hazard. The main hotspots
are located in the coastal areas in the vicinity of Trieste, Venice, Ravenna, Ancona, Pescara, and Bari in Italy;
and Rijeka, Split, Zadar in Croatia; and Durres in Albania.
CONCLUSION
The innovative analytical framework has been implemented in the framework of the FIRESPILL Project.
The system is designed to enhance Emergency Management Systems (EMS) in the case of oil spill accidents
and environmental protection from operational oil pollution from vessels in the Adriatic Sea.
The framework incorporates the fully operational (24/7) web-based application and hazard maps as the
products that statistically estimate chronic oil pollution from ships.
The developed approach can be adopted for the implementation of common monitoring strategies and a
disaster management system, through strengthening administrative and technical capacities, raising awareness,
educating, equipping, and preparing citizen and rescue teams.
The hazard maps obtained can be used for guiding the detection of operational spills in impacted areas and
for coastal management in the context of chronic oil pollution from vessels.
REFERENCES
Brussaard, C., Peperzak, L., Beggah, S., Wick, L.Y., Wuerz, B., Weber, Y., Arey, J.S., Van Der Burg, B., Jonas, A., Huisman, J. &
Van Der Meer, J.R. Immediate ecotoxicological effects of short-lived oil spills on marine biota, Nature Communications, 2016, 7,
11206.
Clementi, E., Aydogdu, A., Goglio, A.C., Pistoia, J., Escudier, R., Drudi, M., Grandi, A., Mariani, A., Lyubartsev, V., Lecci, R., Cretí,
S., Coppini, G., Masina, S. & Pinardi, N. Mediterranean Sea Physical Analysis and Forecast (CMEMS MED-Currents, EAS6
system) (Version 1) Dataset, Copernicus Monitoring Environment Marine Service (CMEMS), 2021.
De Dominicis, M., Pinardi, N., Zodiatis, G. & Lardner, R. MEDSLIK-II, a Lagrangian marine surface oil spill model for short term
forecasting – part 1: Theory, Geoscientific Model Development, 2013, 6, 1851-1869.
Liubartseva, S., De Dominicis, M., Oddo, P., Coppini, G., Pinardi, N. & Greggio, N. Oil spill hazard from dispersal of oil along
shipping lanes in the southern Adriatic and northern Ionian seas, Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2015, 90, 259-272.
Perkovic, M., Harsch, R. & Ferraro, G. Oil spills in the Adriatic Sea, ed. A. Carpenter & A. Kostianoy, Oil Pollution in the
Mediterranean Sea: Part II, The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, 84, Springer, Cham, 2016, 35 pp.
Polinov, S., Bookman, R. & Levin, N. Spatial and temporal assessment of oil spills in the Mediterranean Sea, Marine Pollution Bulletin,
2021, 167, 12338.
Raphael, J., Eggleston, B., Covington, R., Evanisko, T., Bylsma, S. & Amos, J. Applying machine learning to satellite imagery and
vessel-tracking data to detect chronic oil pollution from ships at sea and identify the polluters, EGU General Assembly 2021,
online, EGU21-3737.
UNESCO. Report of consultative meeting of experts on statistical study of natural hazards and their consequences, 1972.
