Risk Assessment and Emergency Response Strategy of Oil Spills in Waters around Taiwan

Risk Assessment and Emergency Response Strategy of Oil Spills in Waters around Taiwan

There are frequent oil spill incidents in the waters of Taiwan. In addition to accidents such as ship grounding and oil pipeline leakage that may cause oil spills, pollution incidents with unknown sources of oil spill often occur, which will have varying degrees of impact on the environment and ecology of the sea. Wind and ocean currents are the main factors that dominate the drift trajectory and spread of oil spills in the open sea. These factors can be supplied through the ocean current fields simulated by the marine fluid dynamic numerical model (such as SCHISM), numerical wind fields provided by the Central Meteorological Bureau, and on-site observations (such as offshore data buoys, X-band radar, or TOROS HF radar) data for prediction or hindcast of oil spill numerical models (such as GNOME). The simulation results of oil spills can be loaded into the environmental sensitivity map established on the cross-platform Google Earth, and then the oil spill risk maps and risk-level assessment tables with different time delays can be produced in a rolling manner. The emergency response operation and communication platform built on this basis not only facilitates users inquiring into the latest oil spill risk information through computers or mobile devices of different operating systems, but also measuring and planning the quantity of materials and space arrangements required for emergency response.