Development of a GIS-based oil spill risk assessment system

The Prestige crisis proved the importance of developing scientific- and application-oriented activities which allow us to improve the oil spill preparedness and response systems having efficient tools to minimize the spill impact in case of an emergency. In this work a methodology has been developed in which oil spill risk is calculated assuming its dependency on the hazard, H, and vulnerability, V, components. To estimate the probability of an oil spill reaching a specific target area, H, an approach based on numerically generated data has been used. Regarding the other risk component, the oil spill vulnerability V, a new approach is presented which focuses on the integration in one single index of physical, biological and socio-economic aspects of the coast. To illustrate the presented methodology it has been applied to the Cantabrian coast, Northern coast of Spain (Bay of Biscay) where a user-friendly application which incorporates a Geographic Information System has been built. This application integrates the two components of the oil spill risk, H and V, to support spill response planning along this coast.