Development of
oil spill tracking module
Marine environment and coastal
regions are seriously influenced by industrial constructions located near (or
far from) the coastal zones. In addition, marine traffic, industrial and
commercial fleet are the other contributing factors affecting marine resources
and environment. Gradual spread of these pollutions to coasts and islands
causes the spread of irreparable genetic abnormalities and increases fatal
diseases in the human population.
Existence of two large water
borders in Iran, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf in the south and the
Caspian Sea in the North, and the country’s economy relying on exploitation and
exporting oil, especially through the marine fleet, clearly indicate the
probability of serious environmental damage caused by these industries.
Marine pollution resources
including industrial wastewater, municipal and atomic wastes, volcanoes, storms
and oil spill at sea adversely affect marine ecosystem. Considering all the
pollutants, oil and petroleum hydrocarbons are of particular international
importance in political, economic and scientific terms. Since oil resources
have remarkable diversity and also the oil spill flow patterns are greatly
affected by specific physical, chemical and biological factors,
the study of marine oil pollution effects is complex and somehow difficult.
However, these complexities make it easy to model other aforementioned
pollutants.
Today, appropriate developed codes
and powerful computers enable us to model complex flow domains.
Effectiveness of mechanical methods
to control marine oil spills is limited to a certain region. Further, these
response actions vary depending on changes in physical properties of oil
including concentration and viscosity. Therefore, it is of high importance to
predict oil spill flow pattern not only for preventing the spread of the
pollution but also for selecting an effective method to remove and control the
pollution.
This research
program seeks to develop a powerful Persian computational tool for simulating
advection and diffusion of oil pollution as well as predicting oil spill flow
pattern, thereby identifying contaminated areas with a great accuracy and
launching oil recovery and emergency operations faster.