NOAA’s Emergency Response Division (ERD) within the Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) has developed oil spill modeling tools to support its job of providing scientific support for oil spill response in the United States. The General NOAA Operational Modeling Environment (GNOME) suite is a set of modeling tools for predicting the fate and transport of pollutants (such as oil) spilled in water. Federal agencies utilize these tools to facilitate spill response efforts. They are also freely available to the public for use in spill preparedness and planning activities, research, and/or public education.
The BSEE OSPD oversees the review and approval of oil spill response plans (OSRPs) which are submitted as a regulatory requirement for offshore oil and gas facility plan holders. WebGNOME has many potential applications for enhancing oil spill preparedness activities; in particular, WebGNOME could be used as a tool in the development of content for OSRPs, the planning of spill scenarios for exercises, and the training of responders and spill managers on the behavior of oil spills in the environment, the organization of offshore response divisions, and the effective use of response countermeasures. BSEE OSPD staff and OSRP plan holders will all benefit from WebGNOME's growing suite of capabilities for response and preparedness. This project will complement and expand some of the previous work along with adding some new capability to WebGNOME.
The objectives of this effort are to:
- Redesign the “landing” page of the WebGNOME application to facilitate a more user-friendly interface for new users, while maintaining the ease of access to advanced features for more experienced users.
- Add additional external model sources to the integrated access tool in WebGNOME.
- Expand the spill initialization interface to incorporate emerging technologies like classifications of oil thickness from Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS).
- Add dielectric fluid records to the Automated Data Inquiry for Oil Spills (ADIOS) database.
- Update the dispersion algorithm to adjust for varying interfacial tension of crude oils and dielectric fluids.
- Document what the limitations are in the current state of knowledge and suggest future research that could close those gaps.
This 18-month contract was awarded to NOAA for $250,000 and is projected to be completed by May 31, 2027.
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