Title :The Usage Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Towards Ocean Oil Spill

Tracking Objective: To find out the ways of UAV to detect or track the oil spill in the ocean.

Journal Summary:

1) Enhanced Oil Spill Surveillance, Detection and Monitoring Through the AppliedTechnology of Unmanned Air Systems A review of the sequence of events and circumstances of a typical spill scenario will help determine how UAV technology might be applied to complement oil or hazardous substance spill response. Lake Maricaibo, in western Venezuela presents a good spill risk situation and realistic scenario for considering applied UAV technology. Lake Maracaibo is the largest lake in South America, approximately 180 km long, covering 13,210 sq km. For years, the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum (MINPET) and PDVSA have jointly sustained a policy and procedure of daily surveillance over flights for early detection of oil discharges into the water. This involves a piloted helicopter with a MINPET observer/evaluator making two to four day-time only flights over sections of Lake Maracaibo, each flight lasting up to two hours, every day, 365 days a year. These are routine surveillance flights for early detection of oil spills from the expanse of production platforms, underwater pipelines and vessels. These surveillance flights add up to over 1,400 manned flights, 3,000 flight hours, and hundreds of thousands of liters of fuel consumption. Were it not for the very low price of fuel in Venezuela, this would be a very costly surveillance program. Manned flights are restricted to day-time operations to minimize the human flight risk. Lake Maracaibo would be an excellent candidate for commercial UAV surveillance, detection and monitoring. With over 37,000 miles (60,000 km) of pipelines, two to ten inches (5-25 cm) in diameter, crisscross each other over 5,100-sq. miles (8,200 square kilometers) of the lake bottom, an underwater pipeline rupture in Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela presents a very realistic scenario. In the event of a ruptured pipeline oil spill, aerial monitoring and tracking should continue throughout the source mitigation and response operations until demobilization.

Employing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as an Element of the Integrated Ocean Observing System
2) The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV) is used to detect the oil spillage when in the midst of a storm, an oil tanker runs a ground in the vicinity of Philadelphia Naval Shipyard releasing tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Delaware River threatening marine life in the river and the protected ecosystem of the nearby John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge. A UAV team arrives on scene to map and track the oil spill. After setting up operations in a small parking lot adjacent to the river, the UAV team initially conducts an orientation flight to determine the extent of the spill. This visible imagery is used to direct teams in real-time who are deploying booms to contain the spill. After these teams actions are set in motion and the buoy is deployed, the UAV team reprograms the flight plan to collect imagery over the Wildlife Refuge. This imagery will serve as baseline data for subsequent change-detection analyses that will aid in monitoring any necessary clean-up activities in the refuge.

3)

Unmanned Air Vehicles for coastal and environmental research

This section outlines an operational scenario, involving networks of UAVs with mixed-initiative interactions, which could take place in the next 5 to 10 years. By mixed initiative interactions its meant the intervention of human operators in the planning and control loops. We focus on an environmental monitoring mission using evolutions of the current AFA/FEUP UAS. Our scenario is motivated by the persistent surveillance of an environmental disaster such as the oil spill from the Prestige tanker that took place in November 2002, 45km off the coast of Galicia, Spain. The Portuguese Air Force monitored the evolution of this disaster by performing 81 missions with C212-300 Aviocar aircrafts. The year is 2015. The maritime authorities trigger an alarm about an incident with an oil tanker 50 km off the coast of Ovar, Portugal. A Joint Task Force (JTF) with members from the Air Force, Navy, local authorities, and civil protection is created to address the control and surveillance of the oil spill. The JTF Command and Control Center (CCC) is located at the Ovar Air Force Base The two C-295 take-off from Montijo Air Base, fly to the disaster area and identify the precise location of the tanker. This information is sent through a military tactical data link (link-22) to the CCC and to the frigate. JTF gives orders to the frigate to move to that location.When the frigate reaches the tanker, one X02 is launched with a catapult. The mission goal is to identify, track and provide imagery data of the oil spill for an initial assessment. Onboard image processing is used to detect and monitor the evolution of the spill. The X02 autonomously tracks the spill, and sends imagery data to the frigate. The data is then sent by a satellite link to the CCC. Experts at the CCC decide that the disaster zone has to be constantly surveyed by at least two UAVs until the oil spill is fully contained. The UAVs from the frigate are not able to accomplish this mission due to limited endurance and capabilities.

4) Remote sensing of environment on the base of the microavition

The method of environment remote sensing on the base UAV flying on the height about 50 m have large potential possibility for decided some regional tasks for detection of different oil slicks with using TV-camera sensed in UV spectrum region. Oil products reflect better than water in microwave region (3.4 and 12.5 GHz),that is why to detect oil spills on the base microwave polarization radiometry. Variety of microwave, optical, and acoustic techniques for measuring oil thickness has been investigated.. In particular, it is possible radar and laser-based remote sensors but its size and energy consumption do not allow using on the UAV mobile platform.