The Oil Spill Training Company

Company overview

The Oil Spill Training Company (OSTC) Ltd have extensive experience in responding to oil spills globally. They have been involved in hundreds of training courses, reviews, studies, exercises and other related projects in over ffty countries worldwide; ensuring that personnel at all levels are prepared for oil spill incidents. They have consistently exploited the latest technologies in their quest to provide the best training and analysis tools for their clients and are currently working on producing the next generation of these tools.

Feasibility Study

The OSTC are currently developing a suite of tools that are aimed at better estimating the size of an oil spill. The current system uses a mouse to select key points around the periphery of the spill from an image of the spill. These key points are used to calculate the enclosed area of the spill and the resultant polygon is then superimposed back onto the source image.

As the OSTC are keen to improve upon their current system, this feasibility study looked at the potential for using global positioning systems (GPS) to map the periphery of an oil spill and generate a more accurate model of the spill. The key deliverables were:

• Investigate and shortlist the most suitable GPS options
• Create a proof of concept solution that can be used to capture and log geo-spatial coordinates
• Identify an existing schema or develop a schema that would be appropriate for the data collected
• Work with the OSTC to allow the outputted data to be integrated into the existing oil spill estimation software (Flash based)
• Evaluate the possibilities for overlaying the data onto images of the oil spill

The outcome

The OSTC decided to use two hardware solutions, the Motion Computing's J3400 Tablet PC and the GlobeSat UB353 USB receiver. This combination offers the fexibility of USB receivers which use a Sirfstar III chipset for excellent GPS tracking and the convenience of an all in one solution with the Tablet PC.

Various software options were investigated including GPSnavX, Google Earth and a bespoke proof of concept solution. Both GPSnavX and Google Earth have the ability to track and export the GPS data but the bespoke option offers more fexibility with regards to the customisation of the data produced and the possibility of integration into their own systems.

There are many readily available GPS data schema so it was recommended that one of these be employed for holding and importing the data, the best options being GPX or KML. The prototype was built to write to a GPX format but this could easily be changed or customised if necessary. The image overlay system is currently in a Flash based application but this could be converted to work with C# implementation which affords access to the GPS hardware directly.

The result of the study will allow the OSTC to greatly improve the accuracy to which they can calculate oil spills by using the real-world coordinates taken from the GPS receiver. The more accurate the data the better prepared teams will be to cope with the incident. This data could in theory be used to greatly reduce the environmental impacts that these man-made disasters can have on the planet. 

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