Publications

Sebastião, P. and Guedes Soares, C. (2007), “Uncertainty in Predictions of Oil Spill Trajectories in Open Sea", Ocean Engineering, Vol. 34, Issues 3-4, pp. 576-584

A method is introduced to calculate and to account for 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 deviation of the output results which gives a measure of the uncertainty of the model given the uncertainties of the input parameters. Instead of a single trajectory that is calculated by the oil spill model using the mean values of the parameters, a band of trajectories can be defined when various simulations are done taking into account the uncertainties of the input parameters. This band of trajectories defines envelopes of the trajectories that are likely to be followed by the spill given the uncertainties of the input. The method is applied to an oil spill that occurred in open sea near Madeira Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, in December 1989. The simulations allow us understanding of how a change in the wind direction drove the spill towards the Islands. The envelope of likely trajectories that is obtained with the uncertainty modelling shows a band of trajectories that is in better agreement with the observations than the single trajectory simulated by the oil spill model, based on mean parameters.

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