Publications

Sebastião, P. and Guedes Soares, C. (2006), “Uncertainty in Predictions of Oil Spill Trajectories in a Coastal Zone", Journal of Marine Systems, Vol. 63, pp. 257-269

A method is introduced to calculate the uncertainties in the predictions of oil spill trajectories using a classic oil spill model. The method considers the output of the oil spill model as a function of random variables, which are the input parameters, and calculates the standard deviations for the output results which give a measure of the uncertainty of the model given the uncertainties of the input parameters. The method was applied to the Marão oil spill that occurred in 1989 near Sines in the south-western coast of Portugal. Instead of the single trajectory that is calculated by the oil spill model, a band of trajectories can be defined when various simulations are done taking into account the uncertainties of the input parameters. Therefore a band of trajectories is obtained which define an envelope of the trajectories that is likely to be followed by the spill given the uncertainties of the input. The band like trajectory that was obtained is closer to the results observed in the field, but the most important outcome of the method was the prediction of possible trajectories that pointed to ways where the crude was actually found and that were not predicted when uncertainties were not taken into account. This additional information is an added value of the method.

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