Oil spill simulation system : structure and verification for the Sea of Japan

The oil spill from the Nakhodka tanker in the Sea of Japan in January 1997 caused extensive damage to the coastal environment of Japan and provided the impetus to develop an oil spill simulation system. The newly developed system presented here consists of a meteorological data processing subsystem, an ocean circulation model, and an oil spill model. The spill model makes use of the particles tracking method and includes the simulation of the physical properties of oil, allowing the particle properties of the oil (such as density, size, viscosity and water content) to be modified as the spill evolves. The system was tested with the sea currents information provided by the three-dimensional modular ocean model and with a more simplified nonlinear model of sea currents. This paper also presented a test of the simulation system using information from the oil spill incident in the Sea of Japan in April 1997 involving the Osung No 3 Korean tanker. This incident involved about 229 kilolitres of heavy Bunker C type oil spilled into an area characterized by strong Tsushima currents and by strong tidal currents. The oil spill simulation system was found to be in good agreement with the actual observations of the oil spill. 31 refs., 1 tab., 6 figs