Oil Pollution Response Planning
Dealing with a pollution incident as a result of a shipping accident can be one of the most difficult coastal management issues. Co-ordinating the response to such incidents is one the most challenging problems faced by both regional and local governments. The development and rehearsal of contingency plans is critical to this process.
Bournemouth University has been working for a number of years with staff at Dorset County Council, Emergency Planning Centre, to develop a co-ordinated training programme for Oil Pollution Response Planning. This partnership has resulted in the development of a realistic, and complex, oil pollution response simulation exercise which is used to train Masters students at Bournemouth as well as professional coastal zone managers. Throughout the exercise participants work in groups in various roles to respond to, and manage, a major coastal pollution incident simulated over a period of twelve hours.
More recently this collaboration has led to Bournemouth University becoming a local partner in a European Union project, Emergency Response to Coastal Oil, Chemical and Inert Pollution from Shipping (EROCIPS). www.erocips.org.
This international collaborative project aims to help countries in the north east Atlantic area develop a common understanding of, and approach to, the threat of coastal pollution from shipping. A number of major oil spills, including the catastrophic incidents involving the vessels Erika off Brittany in 1999 and the Prestige off Spain in 2002, have convinced authorities that a collaborative approach to coastal pollution would best serve national economy and environmental interests.
The project covers pollution threats to the coastline, information exchange to help develop coastal protection and clean-up strategies, pollution mapping and modelling to help predict the outcome of likely pollution incidents, counter pollution resource identification to help develop best practice, and training requirements for those involved in pollution control and management work to help prepare them in response.
The project involves the UK, France, Spain and Portugal working collaboratively and runs for three years until late 2007 under the overall lead of Devon County Council.
For more details contact Brian James
