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Issue link: http://sea-technology.epubxp.com/i/410801
44 st / November 2014 www.sea-technology.com over the years during accidents that occurred in the Mediter- ranean and European seas. MOTHY was used for the Erika and the Prestige incidents, but about 500 interventions each year are conducted with an averaged time response of 30 minutes. MEDSLIK and MEDSLIK–II were used during the Lebanese oil pollution crisis in the summer of 2006, which is considered the biggest oil pollution event in the eastern Mediterranean thus far. MEDSLIK–II was also used for the Und Adriyatik in 2008 and the Costa Concordia emergency in 2012. Such models rely on the availability of meteo-marine predictions prepared by atmospheric, wave and hydrody- namic numerical models and on the information about the location, volume and oil characteristics. The oil spill mod- els provide information about the evolution of the oil spill position and the oil concentration, together with potential beaching impacts. With suffcient computer power, that is nowadays becoming more affordable, such a chain of nu- merical model activities can be automated and run in op- erational mode to provide a round-the-clock service to civil protection agencies, coast guards and maritime authorities for rapid intervention against oil spills originating from the sea to control and limit impacts on, and damages to, the coast and essential resources and structures. A common data exchange system provides the link between the nec- essary information that should be available to the oil spill systems, the environmental data from the Marine Core Ser- vice and the national ocean forecasting systems, the oil slick data from existing monitoring platforms and the data from supplementary resources such as AIS or VTMIS. Through a user interface and a network data repository, the MEDESS- 4MS service is able to provide to the end-users the possi- bility of using any oil spill model and environmental data The Web portal provides different service scenarios, mul- timodel data access and interactive capabilities, including a multilayer operational geographical information system. Its use is possible in real time for the management of emergency situations through simulations using meteo- ocean forecast data based on reported spills, or in delayed mode with simulations using historical environmental data for processing past observations and for hazard-risk assess- ment purposes and contingency planning. The running of an oil spill simulation on the system is basically done in two main steps. The frst step defnes the oil spill geometry (single or multiple-point sources, single or multiple polygons) and descriptors (such as time of start, duration of release, volume and type of oil, etc.). In the second step, the user gives simulation instructions, such as the requested mode of running (forward or back- ward); simulation duration; ocean, wind and wave models to be used; the requested output information, etc. The back- ward mode provides useful qualitative information for the possible identifcation of the source of the pollution through the estimation of the date and position of the origin of the oil spill. Once the simulation is completed, the evolution in time of the oil spill position and concentration is visualized to- gether with additional operational layers such as sea cur- rents, wind speed and direction, wave height and direction, socio-economic and environmental sensitivity maps, and availability of response equipment. The core of the system comprises four well-established, stand-alone oil spill systems in the Mediterranean named MOTHY, MEDSLIK, MEDSLIK-II (now a freely available community model) and POSEIDON-OSM. Each of the four oil spill models has been extensively used and validated The scheme of the MEDESS-4MS decision support system.