Responsible of the pilot activity no. 4.3.1 “Oil spills and other marine hazards”, the Civil Protection Department of the Puglia Region collaborates with the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change Foundation (CMCC), as an external expert in the marine pollution sector. The general CMCC's mission is to investigate and model our climate system and its interactions with society to provide reliable, rigorous and timely scientific results, which in turn will stimulate sustainable growth, protect the environment and develop adaptation and mitigation policies led by science in a changing climate.
The involvement of a team from the Ocean Predictions and Applications (OPA) Division has enabled scientific experts in ocean modeling and forecasting and software engineers to develop models and methods for research related to the marine pollution sector, with a focus on spills of oil. In this context, the web platform called FIRESPILL-WITOIL is created with the aim of support oil spill response in case of possible accidents and on hazard mapping with respect to chronic operational pollution from ships. Being a fully operational 24/7, the platform predicts the oil drift using the MEDSLIK-II oil spill model coupled to meteo-oceanographic datasets.
A user-friendly graphical interface incorporates 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.
The FIRESPILL-WITOIL platform provides a service based on an oil spill model with demonstrated accuracy observed in past spill events and documented in relevant scientific publications. The MEDSLIK-II oil spill model is a community model and supported by a scientific community organized in a partnership. The MEDSLIK-II model is open and free and all information can be found on the reference site http://medslik-ii.org.
