5. Conclusions
Oil pollution is one of the major environmental hazards from
harbour and shipping operations. Even if accidental pollution is not the
only threat to harbour water quality, its control through efficient management
will have positive repercussions on harbour water quality.
In this paper, we have presented the management system which is
being adopted by the Spanish harbours in order to control accidental
pollution and which is already operational in the Barcelona harbour.
The system is based on the risk assessment methodology of Grifoll
et al. (2010). That methodology considers that the risk is not only a
function of the activity, but also of the physical behaviour of the
receptor (i.e. the harbour waters). Water circulation and renewal time
maps are needed to define the vulnerability of the different harbour
areas. The inclusion of that methodology in a management system
requires the development of a harbour circulation forecasting system.
The setup of such a system is far from being a simple technical
problem, as has been shown in this paper. From field data and numerical
experiments the hydrodynamic numerical model requirements
have been defined. Then, using sensitivity experiments, the optimal
operational strategy has been determined. The final operational system,
along with some examples of its application, is presented. In spite of its
complexity, the benefits of having risk maps that evolve over time are
clear for the efficient management of harbour activities in an environment
of rapidly changing hydrodynamic conditions. Although the
work is applied to the Barcelona harbour, the obtained results and
methodology could be translated to similar domains.