Risk Communication for Oil Spill Accident Using Geo-informatics and Sns

The tanker Nakhodka oil spill in the Sea of Japan was happened on January 2 1997 and this accident caused serious environmental damages. After the accident, discussions and collaborations involving citizens and government have been started to make significant steps to protect natural environment of river banks, mountains and hills in the vicinity of human residents and these activities seem to require setting up new social schemes. For this object, this study discussed the integrated geo-informatics technology combined as mash up service, such as Web-GIS, Remote Sensing imagery and SNS(Social Networking Service), for support of decision-makers and for providing the information to public community in cases of the near-shore oil spills following the lessons after the Nakhodka oil spill accident. The Web-GIS in combination with the oil spill simulation model is used for the forecast of the spatio-temporal oil slick trajectory. The oil spill subsystem was used for the planning of the protection and oil removal operations using its result. At the initial stage of the oil spill accident the oil-drift simulation is started. Remote sensing data (RADARSAT SAR images, and X-band radar etc.) are used to estimate the position and state of the spilled oil. Forecasted spill information is assimilated in to the oil spill model. The observational and simulation results are uploaded to the Web page and are available for public through the Web-GIS application. The case of the oil spill accident January 1997 in the Sea of Japan is demonstrated and discussed as the example. Except for the emergency stage, for the application of this system in the ordinary stage, using GIS based ESI Environmental Sensitivity Index map can show the environmental sensitivity to the oil spill. For this object, fishery damage by contingent oil spill accident was estimated. And ESI map including the socio-economical information such as fishery catches and fishing ground was used for resolving confliction among stakeholders. For making the communities for the oil spill accidents, as the communication tool for the ordinary stage, SNS including GIS was proposed. SNS covers the unformatted information and buzz information, and GIS covered the location data. These output were used for contingent Sakhalin oil spill accident around the near shore area of the Sea of Okhotuku.