Towards a new generation of techniques for the environmental management of maritime activities

Abstract

An overview is presented of a new preventive method for minimizing environmental risks based on the optimization of the location of potentially dangerous activities. The starting point of the relevant technology is the frequent presence of semi-persistent surface current patterns in many water bodies. Due to these patterns the probability of transport of dangerous substances (for example, oil pollution) from different open sea areas to vulnerable regions often becomes highly variable. For certain offshore areas this probability is relatively small and (re)directing activities to these areas would involve very limited additional costs. Principles, key components and applications of a prototype method for the identification of such areas and for their use in environmental management of shipping, offshore and coastal engineering activities are described. The core idea is to identify and quantify the potential of different offshore domains to serve as a source of danger to the vulnerable areas through pollution transport by various met-ocean drivers. An approximate solution to this inverse problem of pollution propagation is obtained by means of statistical analysis of a large number of solutions to the direct problem of propagation of tracers in terms of so-called Lagrangian trajectories. The offshore domains are quantified in terms of the probability of the current-driven adverse impact reaching the near-shore after an accident has happened or, alternatively, in terms of time until this impact (for example, an oil spill) reaches the coast. Variations of this method can be used, for example, for estimates of risks of the offshore activities in the open ocean, for fairway design and for the prediction of the most frequently hit near-shore domains.