The Mediterranean Decision Support System for Marine Safety dedicated to oil slicks predictions

The risk from oil spill pollution in the Mediterranean is high due to the heavy traffic of merchant vessels for transporting oil and gas and to the increasing coastal and offshore installations related to the oil industry in general. The basic response to major oil spills includes different measures and equipment. However, in order to make optimal use of such devices and to assist the response agencies, oil spill and trajectory models are used, in order to provide predictions of the drift and weathering of the oil slicks. During the past years, the development of the MyOcean service (today Copernicus Marine Environmental Monitoring Service, CMEMS) and of the associated national downscaled ones of the Mediterranean Operational Network for the Global Ocean Observing System (MONGOOS) network, made possible to provide operational oceanographic forecasting data to suit the oil spill predictions. The Copernicus marine service, together with the ability to detect oil slicks using SAR satellite images, initiated the implementation of a multi model integrated downstream oil spill prediction system in the Mediterranean to support in near real time the maritime safety. The implementation of the system was carried out in the frame of the Mediterranean Decision Support System for Marine Safety (MEDESS-4MS) project, which is dedicated to the response agencies from all the riparian countries and to key users, such as REMPEC, EMSA.