Twenty years of Belgian North Sea aerial surveillance: a quantitative analysis of results confirms effectiveness of international oil pollution legislation

Implementing Bayesian networks for ISO 31000:2018-based maritime oil spill risk management: State-of-art, implementation benefits and challenges, and future research directions

The risk of a large-scale oil spill remains significant in marine environments as international maritime transport continues to grow. The environmental as well as the socio-economic impacts of a large-scale oil spill could be substantial. Oil spill models and modeling tools for Pollution Preparedness and Response (PPR) can support effective risk management. However, there is a lack of integrated approaches that consider oil spill risks comprehensively, learn from all information sources, and treat the system uncertainties in an explicit manner. Recently, the use of the international ISO 31000:2018 risk management framework has been suggested as a suitable basis for supporting oil spill PPR risk management. Bayesian networks (BNs) are graphical models that express uncertainty in a probabilistic form and can thus support decision-making processes when risks are complex and data are scarce. While BNs have increasingly been used for oil spill risk assessment (OSRA) for PPR, no link between the BNs literature and the ISO 31000:2018 framework has previously been made. This study explores how Bayesian risk models can be aligned with the ISO 31000:2018 framework by offering a flexible approach to integrate various sources of probabilistic knowledge. In order to gain insight in the current utilization of BNs for oil spill risk assessment and management (OSRA-BNs) for maritime oil spill preparedness and response, a literature review was performed. The review focused on articles presenting BN models that analyze the occurrence of oil spills, consequence mitigation in terms of offshore and shoreline oil spill response, and impacts of spills on the variables of interest. Based on the results, the study discusses the benefits of applying BNs to the ISO 31000:2018 framework as well as the challenges and further research needs.

Research Progress and Prospects of Marine Oily Wastewater Treatment: A Review

Oily wastewater from shipping waste and marine accidents have seriously polluted the marine environment and brought great harm to human production and health. With the increasing awareness of environmental protection, the treatment of marine oily wastewater has attracted extensive attention from the international community. Marine oily wastewater has various forms and complex components, so its treatment technology faces great challenges. Sources, types, supervision, and treatment of marine oily wastewater are introduced in this paper. The research progress of marine and ship’s oily wastewater treatment technologies in recent years are reviewed from the perspectives of physical treatment, chemical treatment, biological treatment, and combined treatment, respectively. Principles and characteristics of all kinds of technologies were analyzed. In addition, this paper shows that multiple processing technologies used in combination for the purpose of high efficiency, environmental protection, economy, and energy conservation are the future development trend.

Investigation of Oil Spills from Oil Tankers through Grey Theory: Events from 1974 to 2016

An oil spill from a vessel is a critical maritime accident that can severely damage the environment. In this study; we utilize the basic construction of grey relational analysis to explore oil spill events statistics from 1974 to 2015 and successfully analyze the causes of incidents in 2016. The results illustrate that grey relational analysis effectively identifies the factors causing oil spills with an accuracy of over 96%. The research is aimed to reduce the marine accidents and predict the cause of oil spill in advance. The analysis is dealing with the incidents to approach the circumstance in various intensity of oil spill in the last 40 years. Moreover, an application of grey theory demonstrates accurate and reliable methodology to decision maker. Thus, the investigation can predict the causes of pollution from oil spill accidents in the future.

Long-term monitoring study of beached seabirds shows that chronic oil pollution in the southern North Sea has almost halted

Trends in oil rates of beached seabirds reflect temporal and spatial patterns in chronic oil pollution at sea. We analysed a long-term dataset of systematic beached bird surveys along the Belgian North Sea coast during 1962-2015, where extreme high oil contamination rates and consequently high mortality rates of seabirds during the 1960s used to coincide with intensive ship traffic. In the 1960s, >90% of all swimming seabirds that washed ashore were contaminated with oil and estimated oil-induced mortality of seabirds was probably several times higher than natural mortality. More than 50years later oil rates of seabirds have dropped to historically low levels while shipping is still very intense, indicating that chronic oil pollution has significantly declined. The declining trend is discussed in the light of a series of legislative measures that were enacted in the North Sea region to reduce oil pollution.

A preliminary spatial assessment of risk: Marine birds and chronic oil pollution on Canada's Pacific coast

Chronic oil pollution poses substantial risks to marine birds and other marine wildlife worldwide. On Canada's Pacific coast, the negative ecological consequences to marine birds and marine ecosystems in general remain poorly understood. Using information relating to oil spill probability of occurrence, areas of overall importance to marine birds, and the at-sea distribution and density of 12 marine bird species and seven bird groups, including multiple Species at Risk, we undertook a spatial assessment of risk. Our results identify two main areas important to marine birds potentially at higher risk of exposure to oil. For individual bird species or species groups, those predicted to have elevated bird densities near the mainland and the northeast coast of Vancouver Island were identified as being at higher potential risk of exposure. Our results, however, should be considered preliminary. As with other anthropogenic stressors, in order to better understand and subsequently mitigate the consequences of chronic oil pollution on marine birds, improved information relating to marine birds and the occurrence of oil spills on Canada's Pacific coast is needed.

Illegal discharges in Spanish waters. Analysis of the profile of the Alleged Offending Vessel

There is at present a growing concern, on an international level, over environmental offences caused by oil discharges into the sea from vessels. The objective of the Spanish Maritime Administration is to prevent the illegal discharges of polluting substances in Spanish maritime waters by vessels in transit. To combat such discharges, since 2007 Spain has reinforced its means of response with the use of aircrafts that provide services of maritime surveillance, identifying the Alleged Offending Vessels and acting as a deterrent. The objective of the present study is both to introduce the concept and to analyze certain aspects of the so-called "Alleged Offending Vessel" (AOV) that have been detected within Spanish Search and Rescue (SAR) jurisdiction waters in the period 2008-2012, in order to build a profile of such a vessel. For this purpose, an analysis methodology is formalized based on the GINI index and Lorenz curves, associated with certain aspects of vessels: type, flag and sailing area.

Estimating discharge rates of oily wastes and deterrence based on aerial surveillance data collected in western Canadian marine waters

Illegal discharge of waste oil from ships is a major source of mortality for seabirds globally. Using linear and log-linear regression, we explored the relationship between detection rates of marine oily discharges and surveillance effort at different time scales, based on data collected in the Canadian Pacific Ocean by the National Aerial Surveillance Program (NASP) from 1997 to 2006. We introduce an approach for quantifying reductions in discharge rates with increased surveillance while controlling appropriately for surveillance effort, as standard linear correction for effort can introduce considerable bias. Despite low probabilities of detection (0.088-1.1%), we found evidence for reduced discharge rates with increasing surveillance effort for data summarized monthly and bimonthly in region A, which is closest to the NASP base airport. Using residuals derived from the best-fit log-linear models, we found detected discharge rates declined annually (-[0.070 spills/month]×year).

Novel design of solar cell efficiency improvement using an embedded electron accelerator on-chip

In this paper, we propose a novel design of an electron accelerator on-chip by using a small scale device known as a PANDA microring resonator, which can be embedded within the solar cell device, where the trapped electron can be accelerated and moved faster to the final destination. Therefore, the solar cell efficiency can be improved. In principle, a PANDA microring can generate the optical tweezers for hole tapping and transportation. The transported holes can be accelerated and moved via the optical waveguide to the solar cell device contact, where the effect of defects in silicon bulk can be solved. Therefore, this technique can be used to improve the solar cells performance. In practice, the accelerator unit can be embedded within the solar cell device, which allows the trapped holes moving to the required destination. This is claimed to be a novel technique by using a PANDA microring to accelerate the holes for solar cell performance improvement. Finally, this technique is the starting point of using a PANDA microring to enhance the performance of semiconductor device.