Hindcasting Ocean Contaminants to Detect Source or Culprits when "mystery" Spills are Detected.
Steve, Lee
Stevenson Astrosat, UNITED KINGDOM

Often when mystery chemical spills are found the culprits or source is unknown and local environmental agencies are left with the impact including severe clean up costs.

For accurate modelling of a spill the flow of water has to be calculated in 3-dimensions taking into account many variables derived from topographic models, water in-flow (and out-flow) knowledge and pivotally real time data on the surface wind speed/wave height and oil spill volumes (as input conditions.)

Our system tackles this to provide advanced and accurate models of water and contaminant flow especially in coastal regions. Initially developed for oil spill forecasting, our solutions use various computational products which deploy controlled volume finite element methods on meshes which can be unstructured in all three dimensions to accurately define the port or coastal conditions (and vertical topography) over time and which can also adapt to optimally resolve solution dynamics based on real input data from subsequent satellite passes (ideal with Sky-Med and the e-GEOS TPM aggregated return times.)

For hindcasting we reverse the process to model the spread over time of a spill - which can then be cross referenced to shipping data to allow for location of potential culprits with the aim of reducing the burden on local environmental agencies.