Summary

Sri Lanka being an island located near a major maritime path there is a potential risk of oil spills. Thus, preparedness for emergency response for an accidental oil spill is a key aspect that aligned with the countries’ plans to sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources. Sri Lanka has established its National Oil Spill Contingency Plan (NOSCOP) and along with this plan country’s ability to quickly respond to accidental spills and preparedness for emergency response is important in sustainable development. Oil spill models are used in multiple ways: to support decision-making during response operations, in planning for spill response, in environmental impact analysis, and in the assessment of injury to the environment. Thus, having a readily available modeling suit for accidental oil spills will improve the countries’ preparedness for response operations during accidental spills. This was one of the highlighted requirements during the two recent maritime disasters: MT New Diamond and MV Xpress
Pearl, where the lack of modeling support and the dependence on foreign organizations for the modeling studies have hindered the emergency response operations and the environmental damage assessment.
Hence, this research proposes the development of an operational model for accidental oil spill response in the Sri Lankan Sea. The developed modeling suit could be used by the government agencies to respond to future oil spill events. Also, the project will help to develop the science, technology, and capacity of the Sri Lankan academics/researchers on the use of modeling tools in oil spill response operations

Objectives

• To identify the current requirements of the oil spill response modeling in relation to the Sri Lankan
National Oil Spill Contingency Plan (NOSCOP)
• To establish the state-of-the-art ocean oil spill modeling techniques, key governing equations, and
numerical algorithms for oil weathering
• To develop an improved model to simulate the oil fate and transport in an accidental oil spill in the ocean incorporating a regional hydrodynamic model
• To validate the model with experimental and other model simulations available in the literature for
the region
• To propose an operational oil spill response tool to support the emergency response operations in the
territorial waters of Sri Lanka and the maritime zone

Major Equipment Facilitated by Grant