The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) have been using ASA's oil spill model (OILMAP) since 1999, as part of marine protection and oil spill response for 18,000,000 square miles of ocean (1/10th of the globe). OILMAP is used as a decision support tool to predict the movement and weathering of oil spills as part of spill response training and to aid in the effective deployment of oil spill response personnel and equipment to protect environmentally sensitive areas in the event of an actual spill.OILMAP is also being used on a frequent basis in the investigation and prosecution of the illegal discharge of oil at sea by ships.
In June 2004 AMSA upgraded their hydrodynamic model to now include HYDROMAP, ASA's ocean/coastal model, to predict ocean currents for OILMAP's trajectory models. Embedded in a user-friendly interface, HYDROMAP's unique gridding features expand OILMAP's modelling capability, allowing AMSA staff to resolve the effects of high-resolution coastal features such as through-flows between small islands and circulation within ports and harbours. This advancement enables accurate predictions of the water movement in the event of spills near the coast.
Using hydrodynamic models such as HYDROMAP to drive oil spill models is not unusual.
However, what makes the OILMAP-HYDROMAP system significantly more advanced than other standard systems is the ability to include large scale currents measured by orbiting satellites supplied by CSIRO, as well as the use of detailed spatial wind data provided by the Bureau of Meteorology for the entire AMSA response region. ASA has developed tools to integrate the large-scale currents (in NetCDF format) that develop in deeper water off the continental shelf with the in-shore HYDROMAP-predicted tidal currents. This allows the AMSA staff to forecast the movement of spilled oil should it originate in deep waters and move towards the coastline, or vice-versa. The spatial wind data (LAPS & GASP), provides a 3-day forecast, allowing the user to run models forward in time and predict the future movement and weathering of the oil. The goal is to allow more time for planning and preparedness.As part of this implementation of HYDROMAP, the system has been tested and validated for a number of Australia's known high risk sites including South Great Barrier Reef, Sydney Harbour, Port Phillip Bay and Darwin Harbour. In August 2003, HYDROMAP was used as part of a ground-truthing exercise in Moreton Bay National Marine Park. During this exercise, the integrated HYDROMAP-OILMAP system was found to produce accurate forecasts for the region.
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