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Maritime Forum

How quickly can we provide information on marine oil spills?

results of an exercise where two teams were asked to determine the fate of oil following accidents in the North Sea and Mediterranean are now available

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Two teams are assessing the usefulness and accessibility of Europe's marine data – one in the North Sea and one in the Mediterranean. Part of the work involves responding to a series of challenges. In one of the challenges, the teams are told that an accident has occurred and oil is discharging into the sea. The teams are not given any details beforehand of where the accident will happen or when they will be called upon to react. They then need to provide information within 24 hours that can help intervention teams. The need to determine where the oil will go and how it will affect the natural environment and human activities.

In the event, both teams responded exceedingly well and valuable lessons learned for the next exercise. The results can be seen here for the Mediterraneanand theNorth Sea