Risk assessment of oil spill accidents, Part 2: application to Saronikos gulf and Izmir bay

In a companion paper (Stamou et al., 2013) an integrated mathematical model was presented for the assessment of oil spill risk due to maritime accidents. The model consists of four parts: (1) a physics-based hydrodynamic model (HYM) which computes the spatial distribution of surface water currents as the main driving force for oil transport, (2) an expert-based accident assessment model (AAM) to compute the frequency, location and characteristics of expected oil spills, (3) a physics-based oil spill model (OSM) which computes the propagation and fate of the oil slick, and (4) an expert-based impact assessment model (IAM) to compute the distribution of coastal impact due to oil contamination. In the present paper, the model is applied to two areas: the Saronicos Gulf, Greece and Izmir Bay, Turkey. The main criteria for case selection were the busy maritime traffic in both areas and the fact that the two large metropolitan areas of respective countries are located in these bays. The flow fields in both areas were determined by the HYM for a large number of wind scenarios, based on which the transport and weathering of an oil slick were computed by the OSM. The most probable oil spill locations were identified by AAM based on the bathymetry, the maritime traffic and the currents. Finally, the IAM was applied to draw Coastal Oil Impact Maps in the regions of interest. Emphasis was placed on the presentation of the risk of oil reaching the coastline. Environmental sensitivity and economic importance were taken into account by assigning index values to all coastal cells.