Funding: DG ECHO Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection
EIGSI Project Manager: Frédéric Muttin
Duration: January 2013 – December 2014
Partners: Instituto Superior Técnico, Action-Modulers, Falmouth Harbour Commissioners
Description: The ISDAMP consortium (Improving Shorelines Defenses Against Marine Pollution) was composed of a Portuguese University (IST), its IT company, the Port of Falmouth in Cornwall and EIGSI, which led the project.
The project partners share their experiences and digital tools to produce a decision-making software based on coastal hydrodynamics and the positioning of floating booms. This software will help to develop preparedness plans for local authorities (General Council of Charente Maritime) and commercial ports (Falmouth, Rochefort, Lisbon) in the event of oil spills. Key knowledge outputs will be provided to coastal and maritime communities, as well as to National (SG-Mer) and European Authorities.
Oil Spill Contingency Plans (OSCPs) are helpful to organisations and communities, but they often lack simulation and modelling of booms.
Modelling both coastal hydrodynamics and boom positioning has numerous advantages:
- anticipating coastal and marine conditions;
- lower risks and proven effectiveness;
- more reliable and less disruptive to maritime traffic;
- time savings by identifying handling, installation, withdrawal and storage areas;
- improved modelling of the behaviour of oil drifting and floating in the vicinity of the boom;
- the opportunity to contribute to a sensitive installation protection plan and ensure that deployments are consistent with the expectations of the authorities and the expertise of the agents.
Objectives:
- operational modelling of coastal currents near booms (MOHID software);
- develop operational models of booms under various deployment scenarios (BAR3D software);
- couple previous models with the integration tool of hydrological models in crisis management (OPEN-MI Interface);
- real-life and simulated tests in the three regions of the consortium (Lisbon, Falmouth, La Rochelle);
- improve skills in operational deployment by training users of the decision-making software;
- promote best practices among local and regional stakeholders (regions in Europe).
The ultimate goal is to create a generic methodology and a best practices guide based on the decision-making software for the position of floating booms.
Within the consortium, the EIGSI research teams are in charge of developing numerical models of booms and integrating with the coastal hydrodynamics models. EIGSI’s main objectives are to build a numerical computation software, prepare and conduct experiments in partnership with other members of the consortium, prepare local stakeholders at the selected sites, transfer the research results and perform an overall review.
