Work Packages 4

WP4 concerns the improvement of the oil spill modeling application. This complex WP is made up of multiple activities:

1. the purchase and release of drifters in the westMED areas of interest;

2. improved modeling of oil spills in the westMED areas of interest;

the exercise of simulated oil spills.

a) In Beyond CALYPSO, through the purchase of drifters differentiated by technology and purchased from some partners, the intention is to create a new monitoring network useful even after the conclusion of the project; in fact, it can be made available to the port authorities to support real operations in the event of future emergencies. During the project, the release of drifters in the westMED areas will allow to calibrate and validate the oil spill tracking models that will be implemented as part of WP4.

b) At first the efforts will be focused on improving the application of oil spill modeling in the westMED Italy-Malta area by extending the monitoring domain beyond the area strictly linked to the availability of HF CALYPSO data.

The modeling using different forcings (including CMEMS-COPERNICUS products) will be calibrated/validated also thanks to the availability of numerous data acquired from previous drifter releases carried out from 2013 onwards within the CALYPSO, CALYPSO FO and CALYPSO SOUTH projects. In addition to the MEDSLIK model, other models will be tested (e.g. PYGNOME).

In this phase, the best strategies for data fusion of HF data with large-scale CMEMS-COPERNICUS data are determined. In the westMED Italy-Malta area, it will be possible to determine the increase in performance resulting from the availability of HF CALYPSO data. These outputs will be shown to stakeholders during the simulated oil spills exercise.
A second step concerns the implementation of the oil spill modeling application in the westMED Italy-Malta-Tunisia area. Once the domain to be monitored has been defined, the oil spill modeling application will be tested using exclusively the CMEMS-COPERNICUS forcings. The comparison with the trajectories of the drifters released during the project will allow the validation of the implemented application, thus providing, in a wider WestMED area than the Sicilian-Maltese channel, a service to support stakeholders in the event of emergencies. Where available in the westMED Italy-Malta-Tunisia area, historical data acquired from drifter releases will also be taken into consideration in order to increase the statistical consistency of the validation process.

Such data may concern both drifter releases carried out within the CALYPSO, CALYPSO FO, and CALYPSO SOUTH projects but also deriving from experiments carried out by other research groups within other projects (e.g. ARGO-Italy).
c) The simulated oil spill exercise will be organized after the improved oil spill chain is tested and validated. This is in order to seize the opportunity to disseminate the project actions as much as possible to the identified stakeholders. In this way it will be possible to demonstrate the effectiveness of the implemented services which will then be transferred to stakeholders and takers who will participate in the training sessions.

The exercise will concern the Italy-Malta cross-border area, this will also allow further testing of the flow of action and communication of the Italian port authorities (Port Authority of Pozzallo) and Maltese (Transport Malta).