Global Response Network Research Articles

Moving the dial through collaboration – The Global Response Network

ABSTRACT For many years there have been lots of Oil Spill Response Organizations (OSROs) worldwide. Their organization, concept of operations and skills have to a large extend been tailored to their specific areas of operations, members demand and the OSROs own practice and experience. Collaboration between OSROs has been somewhat limited. During the last decade, the post-Macondo follow up has showed – and strengthened – the necessity of tiered preparedness, hence the importance of collaboration between different oil spill response organizations has raised to another level. One arena which has evolved tremendously during the last decade, has been the Global Response Network – GRN. The dial can surely be said to have moved considerably towards closer collaboration. The Global Response Network (GRN) exists to share information, improve spill response performance and provide centers of expertise in spill preparedness, response and recovery techniques. It is a forum for oil spill response organizations to improve their individual performance and effectiveness by: fostering strong collaborative relationships between Members;establishing functional teams to exchange operating information, response techniques and share good practice; andassisting oil companies and other stakeholders to enhance industry standards for spill response. The GRN will operate under an Executive Committee (EC) framework which purpose is to determine the broad strategic direction of the GRN. The EC is also reviewing and assessing the work of the functional teams operating under the EC, known as the Operational Teams (OTs). During the last decade, the OTs have developed into a global, functional group of experts working across nations and boundaries. The OT's represents the operational expertise within the OSROs and have become the bodies to operationalize and implement the Good Practice Guidelines developed through IPIECA post-Macondo. Having this body – or structure – of experts to support the industry (and IPIECA) has proven important. This presentation will describe how the last decade has made improvements in collaboration between OSROs and different agencies – both regulators, companies, agencies, the public and responder – to make oil spill response more efficient, standardized and created a better understanding of the importance of having a good, well-functioned oil spill response.

Tracking Beyond Detection: Learning a Global Response Map for End-to-End Multi-Object Tracking

Most of the existing Multi-Object Tracking (MOT) approaches follow the Tracking-by-Detection and Data Association paradigm, in which objects are firstly detected and then associated in the tracking process. In recent years, deep neural network has been utilized to obtain more discriminative appearance features for cross-frame association, and noticeable performance improvement has been reported. On the other hand, the Tracking-by-Detection framework is yet not completely end-to-end, which leads to huge computation and limited performance especially in the inference (tracking) process. To address this problem, we present an effective end-to-end deep learning framework which can directly take image-sequence/video as input and output the located and tracked objects of learned types. Specifically, a novel global response network is learned to project multiple objects in the image-sequence/video into a continuous response map, and the trajectory of each tracked object can then be easily picked out. The overall process is similar to how a detector inputs an image and outputs the bounding boxes of each detected object. Experimental results based on the MOT16 and MOT17 benchmarks show that our proposed on-line tracker achieves state-of-the-art performance on several tracking metrics.

Sharing Good Practice Throughout the Responder Community: Ten Years of the Global Response Network

Abstract The Global Response Network (GRN) is a collaboration of industry funded Oil Spill Response Organisations (OSROs) created to share good practice for the wider benefit of the oil industry. Created in 2005, the GRN was originally conceived as a mechanism to facilitate the sharing of trained response personnel at a time when the global pool of responders was much smaller than now and spills were becoming less frequent, thanks to improvements in ship design, operation and regulation. Personnel sharing arrangements under the GRN were designed to enable individual responders to gain valuable spill experience more easily and thereby enhance experience levels across the global pool. It was also envisaged that the cooperation among participating OSROs would enable the sharing of specialised equipment resources for the benefit of the collective industry membership. Although the core membership of the GRN has remained largely unchanged since its creation, the purpose and modus operandi of the GRN has evolved considerably in that time. Today the key added value provided by the GRN comes from sharing knowledge and information more than sharing people and equipment. This is particularly evidenced by the industry action which followed in the wake of the Montara (2009) and Macondo (2010) incidents. The international oil industry undertook a Joint Industry Project (JIP) to coordinate this unprecedented effort to apply the lessons from these incidents in order to improve the management and technical aspects of spill response. Today the challenge is to integrate and harmonise the various outputs from this effort throughout the responder community and the GRN is playing a key role in this. One way this is being achieved is through the “Confident Ambassador” programme, whereby responders are familiarised with the JIP outputs and the accompanying communications toolkit. A slide deck has been created for OSRO use to help responder organisations achieve deeper understanding of the science of response within their own organisations and, more importantly, to help disseminate consistent messages about industry approaches to oil spill preparedness and response to a wide range of external stakeholders that the responder community engages with. This paper explores this and other facets of the evolution of the GRN through its first ten years, from a resource enabling organisation to a knowledge and information sharing organisation befitting the post-Macondo paradigm. The paper also considers future trends that may shape the next phase of evolution for the GRN.

Development of the Cold Weather Training Courses

With the increasing interest to drill in extreme cold environments and the existing drilling and production of oil in extreme cold weather locations, the extent of cold regions operations are expected to increase. OSRL tasked its Cold Weather Working Group to assess and build on its capability to maintain a suitable level of competence to deliver the response services required by its members. The subsequent action was the design and delivery of a five day cold weather Standard Course and Continuation Course to OSRL staff, Global Response Network (GRN) members and industry. The courses were designed using the cold weather knowledge and experience that OSRL staff gained through their secondments in Sakhalin, Kazakhstan and Alaska. GRN members, in particular Eastern Canada Response Centre (ECRC) and Alaska Clean Seas (ACS), were also instrumental in the design and delivery of the courses. The paper will seek to present how knowledge collaboration and impartation has been integrated throughout the full training cycle which includes the preparation phase of the courses, the delivery phase in Canada with the delegates from GRN members and industry, and the evaluation phase with a view for future development courses. Much research has been conducted on theory and methods of response to oil spills in extreme cold weather environments and the challenges that can arise such as the safety elements of working on ice and in remote locations. In conclusion, the paper will highlight the elements of the Standard and Continuation Courses that are implemented into the training cycle in order to increase, and thereafter, maintain OSRL's competence and industry's preparedness.

Improving Oil Spill Response capability during times of downsizing and budget cuts: A glance at the Norwegian way

ABSTRACT How can we continuously develop and improve large scale emergency preparedness, such as oil spill response, in times of low oil prices, budget cuts and downsizing? NOFO (Norwegian Clean Seas Association For Operating Companies) has found its path, through modernization and cooperation. When there are spills of crude oil from the petroleum industry at the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) NOFO will perform the oil spill response (OSR) on behalf of the owner of the spill, in practical terms becoming the company’s OSR branch during the incident. NOFO was founded in 1978, as a response to the large blowout at the Bravo field the previous year. Focus on offshore OSR technology and combat strategies has been the main motivation during our almost 40 year’s existence. The last decade has included a significant improvement in our competence and training on near-shore and beach OSR, simultaneously maintaining the unique offshore segment. As part of improving NOFO capacity within large scale, and / or long duration spill situations (e.g. Macondo), NOFO have embraced and implemented ICS (Incident Command System), thus improving our capabilities and capacities through the whole range from offshore to shoreline OSR. Through 2015 and 2016 ICS training and ICS adaptions of previous organizational systems has been prioritized, and new ones have been developed. NOFO personnel have participated in numerous training sessions and exercises with our member companies (operators on the Norwegian continental shelf) nationally and internationally. Through strategic choices of planning and collaboration both internally in NOFO and between NOFO and the Norwegian Coastal Administration (NCA), Global Response Network (GRN), other oil spill Response Organizations (OSROs) and cooperating partners, the number of exercises has increased, the value and output of exercises is improved, and thus the capacity and capability of NOFOs whole range OSR in improved. At the same time, on behalf of our members, NOFO have consumed less money year after year. NOFO is developing and improving our proven OSR capacity and competence, from offshore to shoreline, through increased efficiency, high focus on exercise training, and cooperation with other OSR agencies.

Responding to Oil Spills Under Ice: Alaska Clean Seas' Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) Training Course

The Alaska North Slope region is a demanding operating environment for oil exploration, production and transportation operations. The Arctic Ocean remains frozen for an average of nine months of the year, with only a limited open-water season in the summer. There are long periods of darkness, extremely harsh weather conditions, remote installations and limited infrastructure. As Arctic oil exploration, production and transportation activities expand, there is growing concern about the ability of public and private sector response organizations to effectively clean up oil spills under ice. Alaska Clean Seas (ACS) is the Alaska North Slope oil spill response cooperative based in Prudhoe Bay, AK. ACS oversees the training and coordination of the North Slope Spill Response Team (NSSRT), a volunteer-based organization consisting of personnel from the workforce of ACS' Member Companies and their support contractors. Beginning in January 2012, ACS partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) in Hanover, NH, to develop an Advanced Oil Spill Response in Ice Course. Now in its third year, this partnership has combined the unique facilities, capabilities and ice research history of CRREL with the Arctic response expertise and experience of Alaska Clean Seas to deliver realistic, one-of-a-kind training for recovering oil spilled under ice. Participants have included members of the NSSRT, several federal regulatory agencies and representatives from the Global Response Network. ACS provides response equipment from the North Slope and several vendors have demonstrated additional skimming and pumping systems specifically designed for recovery in ice. Central to the course is CRREL's outdoor saline test basin, a 60′ × 25′ × 7′ refrigerated in-ground tank equipped to grow and maintain a two-foot cover of sea ice. Approximately 600 gallons of Alaska North Slope crude oil are injected under the ice to provide a realistic field scenario to practice response tactics. These tactics include assessment and profiling techniques for safely working on the ice; employing underwater lights and ground penetrating radar for detection of oil under ice; use of augers and chainsaw sleds to cut holes and slots in the ice; deployment of recovery and storage systems to remove oil from an ice environment; and in-situ burning operations in slush and broken ice. This poster highlights the development of the CRREL Training Course and provides guidelines for course content, length, and special considerations for similar advanced field training courses.

Hopedale Branch: A Vessel of Opportunity Success Story

ABSTRACT Alaska Clean Seas (ACS) provided operational support to the Mississippi Canyon 252 (Deepwater Horizon) spill in several stages. Beginning on 05 May 2010, ACS sent approximately 80,000 feet of various sizes of boom to the Gulf of Mexico region; later shipments of equipment included 5,500 feet of fire boom and several large skimmers. ACS also deployed response personnel to Staging Areas and Incident Command Posts throughout the theater, in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Personnel deployment was initiated through the Global Response Network in support of Marine Spill Response Corporation (MSRC) and continued as direct support to BP. In early May, the Hopedale Branch (St. Bernard Parish, LA) identified ACS' expertise in nearshore response and requested the organization to develop a nearshore Vessel of Opportunity (VOO) skimming capability. Over the next several weeks, an intensive effort was put forth to identify adequate local vessels; design and fabricate deployment systems to attach ...

Telehealth responses to bio-terrorism and emerging infections

Emerging infectious diseases, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), are of huge economic importance. They are difficult to predict. The World Health Organization has a Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, which was involved at an early stage in the SARS outbreak in 2003. Three major lessons were learned as a result of the SARS epidemic in 2003, involving communication, evidence-based action and global partnerships. It is proposed that a series of broadband global response networks should be developed. At a technical level the networks are essentially in place, such as the Internet2 global network. Suitable peripheral devices also exist. What has not yet been created is the appropriate software to allow the use of these networks, although a number of commercial products are in the process of development.