Optimized Airborne Oil Spill Remote Sensing: POSEIDON, the Quantitative Approach

Abstract

ABSTRACT Aerial surveillance is becoming a foundation on the overall oil spill response strategy due to the ability to plan and tactically position response resources in the optimal areas of oil migration. It takes a complete multitasking approach to effectively respond to oil spills. While much of the regulatory focus to date has been on the resources on the sea - vessels, skimmers, dispersants - the reality is that they are only one of the components and not necessarily the most important in combating oil spills. It is imperative to determine the location of oil that is most recoverable, and give quantitative information - thickness, volume, area, classification - whether day or night. Having the right information at the right time optimizes dramatically the use of all the response resources. And assess the effectiveness of the response and make an accurate natural resources damage assessment is critical and requires as well quantitative and timely information. In the past the main effort has been directed towards developing airborne sensors with enhanced spill monitoring capability. Recently, more and more attention has been paid to the automated processing of oil spill data acquired by integrated airborne sensor platforms. Automated processing and real time relay of immediately usable information to the Incident Command Center is critical during all phases of response. This paper focuses on advanced data processing and presents ways of improving the usability of airborne multi-sensor oil spill monitoring systems. In this context, is given an overview of currently existing oil spill remote sensing technology like infrared/ultraviolet line scanners, microwave radiometers, laser fluorosensors and radar system. The paper presents POSEIDON, a system for network-based real-time data acquisition, analysis and fusion of multi-sensor data. Also, a method for the distribution of oil spill data and related data products using web-based geographical information systems is described; automated generation of thematic maps of the oil spill scene along with their real-time web-based distribution is becoming more important in marine incident management.