bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Making the best of a worst case scenario: Creating job opportunities for workers in underserved communities through health and safety training in the Deep South
Authors: Wright Beverly , Bullard Robert D. , Turner Ebony C. 
Published: December 2017

When the 2010 Gulf oil spill reached the shores of Louisiana, The Dillard University Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, part of a New Orleans based HBCU, jumped into the oil spill response to support workers and communities impacted by oil, many of whom were still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. Dillard, an NIEHS Worker Training Program (WTP) grantee, provided expert trainers to deliver 40-hour HAZWOPER, 10 hour refresher courses and awareness training to early response workers in the Gulf.
In addition to supporting the training needs of workers from around the country gathering in the Gulf, Dillard utilized a unique training program to train workers in Louisiana's underserved communities in the health, safety and life-skills needed to support spill clean-up in their own back yards. The Environmental Career Worker Training Program (ECWTP), funded by NIEHS, focuses on delivering comprehensive training to increase the number of disadvantaged and underrepresented minority workers in areas such as environmental restoration, construction, hazardous materials/waste handling, and emergency response. Dillard's successful track record in placing ECWTP participants in safe jobs led them to focus on training ECWTP participants in the skills and safety awareness needed to support the oil spill cleanup. Through this unique training program, Dillard had a cohort of ECWTP graduates receive work in the response. Dillard's model program highlights how health and safety training can both support national disaster response and provide local jobs to willing, but underserved, community members during a disaster.
Ensuring global preparedness and response management capability in the current staff-and cost-constrained environment
Authors: Garcia Hank 
Published: December 2017

The planning-training-exercise-respond cycle is essential to ensure a company's preparedness and ability to respond. How do you develop and maintain these critical skills in your global operations? How can you support global affiliates to deliver a safe and effective response to an oil spill or other major event? This paper will present recommendations and techniques to achieve these goals.
The first recommendation is to establish the Incident Command System (ICS) as a global standard in your operations. ICS is a best practice methodology for response management that is flexible, is used by global OSROs, and has been adapted in many countries. The effort to set and achieve global training and exercise requirements will pay off in many ways, e.g., by facilitating the integration of out-of-country resources to support a response.- Set clear, relevant training objectives:+ Personnel demonstrate a basic understanding of ICS: structure, roles and responsibilities, deliverables, and key processes (e.g., planning, resource management, communications).+ Personnel are thoroughly familiar with company plans (local, regional, and global), incident management handbooks, and other internal resources.+ Other objectives address regional regulatory requirements, areas for improvement identified in exercises and/or incidents, etc..- Establish a global template for spill response plans. Include modules to address regional and operational requirements. For example, modules for onshore and offshore facilities, terminals, wellhead operations, pipeline operations, etc. Standard formats will support compliance, facilitate audits, and also facilitate the sharing of areas for improvement.- Leverage the development of a core training program with simple modifications to make materials applicable for global affiliates.- Establish a global library of scenarios for training and exercises to support compliance with requirements. Using a basic set of scenarios globally has the additional benefit of facilitating the sharing of lessons learned and areas for improvement.- Integrate training and exercise programs with complementary objectives.- Exercises are always a challenge and can be costly to develop and conduct. Prepare exercise-development kits to facilitate the definition of exercise objectives, adaptation of standard scenarios, documentation of injects and activities, accommodation of local and cultural differences, and the preparation of after action reports.- Use exercises to improve plans, build teamwork, build relationships with key stakeholders, and improve individual skills.- To ensure effective training, incorporate adult education techniques into lesson planning and development and modify as needed for compatibility with local language and culture.
Advances in Oil Detection and Monitoring
Authors: DeMicco Erik , Nedwed Tim , Palandro David A. , Lane Peter , Chase Chris , Van Bibber Steve 
Published: December 2017

Boom is used to contain oil for burning or skimming, deflect oil from sensitive areas, or protecting shorelines. For a large spill, hundreds of kilometers of boom could be deployed in efforts to protect shorelines. Currently, aerial or vessel-based observers are sent to determine if a boom is contacting oil or to monitor its integrity. The level of effort required to carry out a thorough inspection is considerable and can be challenged due to weather or logistical constraints. Further, the time interval between inspections can be between 12 hours to several days.
To both minimize personnel requirements and provide real-time status, we have developed an advanced boom monitoring system. The system monitors boom integrity and the presence of oil. The elements of the system include a non-contact ultraviolet fluorometer, a computer processing unit (CPU), communications via a satellite modem, and a power source. This equipment is housed within a 24″ marine aluminum buoy. The CPU can be remotely interfaced using the satellite modem to adjust parameters for data collection and reporting. Key parameters that can be adjusted include oil thickness on water (e.g., notification versus actionable oil), reporting time (e.g., every 10 minutes or 60 minutes), and system status. The boom monitor has two standard boom connections to allow it to connect between two lengths of shoreline boom or it can be anchored separately from the boom.
This paper will summarize development and capabilities of the advanced boom monitoring system.
Mobile Technologies for Geographic Response Plans (V2.0)
Authors: Nepveu Guillaume , Lamarche Alain , Grenon Stéphane 
Published: December 2017

Companies in the oil & gas industry must undertake extensive environmental studies for every new project. The case of the Trans Canada East Energy pipeline project illustrates this phenomenon. These studies include large-scale field surveys campaigns that generate a huge amount of raw geospatial data. A key component of this process resides in the analysis of this data in order to create knowledge. In this perspective, while many mobile geospatial collectors are available, we focused on designing a complete mobile GIS.
Most field experts are not data management specialists and vice versa. Our goal is to use mobile technology to reduce the gap between field observations and geospatial data analysis. Bringing data analysis capabilities directly in the field is advantageous because it provides useful insights in real-time and it can avoid costly mistakes. We have also focused on enhancing the planning phase prior to the field surveys, such as allowing importation of external data into our system.
We encountered many challenges while developing our mobile geospatial solution for geographic response plans. One critical element was the mean of transportation used during the surveys. For instance, airborne surveys using a helicopter requires specific navigational features to be accurate. Another element was the availability of internet connections. We had to permit offline map layer in order to provide high quality satellite imagery. Finally, power efficiency is critical for long field surveys. We had to optimize our mobile application in order to maximize the battery's lifespan while retaining enough features such as the GPS precision.
Overall, the challenge was to design a system that would permit monitoring that could take place years after the initial data collection. This affected the way we had to implement data sharing, storage and export.
Sharing Good Practice Throughout the Responder Community: Ten Years of the Global Response Network
Authors: Limb Robert , Nicoll Andrew 
Published: December 2017

Abstract
The Global Response Network (GRN) is a collaboration of industry funded Oil Spill Response Organisations (OSROs) created to share good practice for the wider benefit of the oil industry. Created in 2005, the GRN was originally conceived as a mechanism to facilitate the sharing of trained response personnel at a time when the global pool of responders was much smaller than now and spills were becoming less frequent, thanks to improvements in ship design, operation and regulation. Personnel sharing arrangements under the GRN were designed to enable individual responders to gain valuable spill experience more easily and thereby enhance experience levels across the global pool. It was also envisaged that the cooperation among participating OSROs would enable the sharing of specialised equipment resources for the benefit of the collective industry membership.
Although the core membership of the GRN has remained largely unchanged since its creation, the purpose and modus operandi of the GRN has evolved considerably in that time. Today the key added value provided by the GRN comes from sharing knowledge and information more than sharing people and equipment. This is particularly evidenced by the industry action which followed in the wake of the Montara (2009) and Macondo (2010) incidents. The international oil industry undertook a Joint Industry Project (JIP) to coordinate this unprecedented effort to apply the lessons from these incidents in order to improve the management and technical aspects of spill response. Today the challenge is to integrate and harmonise the various outputs from this effort throughout the responder community and the GRN is playing a key role in this.
One way this is being achieved is through the “Confident Ambassador” programme, whereby responders are familiarised with the JIP outputs and the accompanying communications toolkit. A slide deck has been created for OSRO use to help responder organisations achieve deeper understanding of the science of response within their own organisations and, more importantly, to help disseminate consistent messages about industry approaches to oil spill preparedness and response to a wide range of external stakeholders that the responder community engages with.
This paper explores this and other facets of the evolution of the GRN through its first ten years, from a resource enabling organisation to a knowledge and information sharing organisation befitting the post-Macondo paradigm. The paper also considers future trends that may shape the next phase of evolution for the GRN.
NEW IMO/EPPR GUIDES TO ARCTIC OIL SPILL RESPONSE – STRATEGIC AND OPERATIONAL
Authors: Owens E. H. , Dickins D. F. , Solsberg L. B. , Bjerkemo O-K. 
Published: December 2017

ABSTRACT
In 2015 and 2016, two complementary projects produced both a new strategic guide (in two versions) and an updated operationally oriented guide to assist managers, regulators and responders in responding effectively to oil spills in snow and ice conditions. The objective of the first initiative, which began as a Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) project, a “Guide to Oil Spill Response in Snow and Ice Conditions”, was to identify and describe the strategic aspects of planning and operations. This program gained a separate phase through the Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response (EPPR) working group of the Arctic Council to adapt the Guide specifically for Arctic waters. The second initiative by EPPR was to update the 1998 “Field Guide for Oil Spill Response in Arctic Waters” while retaining the original operational focus. The 2016 version of the Field Guide incorporates major revisions and updates to sections on strategies and countermeasures, for example the use of herders and burning, dispersants in ice and specialized brush skimmers as well as advances in remote sensing and tracking. In addition, new sections address important topics such as Health and Human Safety, Logistics and Wildlife Response.
The overall goal was to produce two complementary documents that provide a broad base of essential information to key decision-makers and responders at both the strategic planning level and at the field tactics and operations level.
These two projects bring together a wide range of new knowledge generated over the past two decades that make many previous manuals and documents out of date. With such a vast amount of recent literature, the new strategic guide and the operational field guide update can only provide a brief summary of the new material but are valuable tools to indicate where the more detailed documents can be found.
The Canadian Oil Spill Shoreline Research Program: Establishing a Baseline Dataset for the Marine Coast of Northern British Columbia
Authors: Laforest Sonia , Yang Zeyu , Lambert Patrick , Goldthorp Michael , Brown Carl 
Published: December 2017

Abstract 2017-182
The dispersal and weathering processes of crude and fuel oils have been studied for decades and significant scientific information has been published. However, the fate and behaviour of spilled nonconventional crude oil such as diluted bitumen products are less well understood. There is concern that a spill of the oil sands diluted bitumen may come into contact with marine shorelines as it is transported throughout Canada. There is uncertainty related to the fate of spilled diluted bitumen and potential interactions with shorelines. A Shoreline Oil Spill Research and Development Program was undertaken by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). In 2013, a 3-year study was initiated and focused on the marine shorelines of northern British Columbia (BC). Four field campaigns were conducted along the entire length of coast throughout the Douglas and Granville channels as well as Banks and Haida Gwaii islands. The field campaigns were used as an opportunity to develop and employ a new approach to collect and compile an extensive pre-spill baseline dataset. Data included an aerial survey with high definition video and a ground survey of representative shorelines where samples were collected and analyzed for petroleum hydrocarbons, carboxylic acid, pesticides, heavy metals, calcium carbonate and sediment grain size. Baseline levels of hydrocarbons in the sediment of the study areas were estimated based on the analysis of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH), n-alkanes ranging from n-C9 to n-C40, petroleum related biomarkers such as terpanes and steranes, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and their alkylated homologues (APAHs).
Innovative Oil Spill Recovery Technology Developments
Authors: Johnson Gregory , Grayson Christopher , Stromlund Adam 
Published: December 2017

ABSTRACT (2017-404)
Long-term challenges for the oil spill response industry include spills occurring in the open ocean or ice-infested waters, as well as spills of heavy oil. Historically, only a small percentage of the oil from major spills is ever recovered. For example, during the Deepwater Horizon incident, skimming operations only accounted for approximately 3% of the spilled oil. This low number was due to the delayed response of assets as well as the use of inefficient skimming systems and methods. Both government and private organizations seek effective response solutions that are capable of rapid deployment to existing platforms and infrastructure.
Alion Science and Technology, under contract to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has developed two proof-of-concept technologies; both of which were successfully tested in 2016. Both of these research projects have been pushing the edge of the envelope for oil spill recovery operations with the use of existing technologies.
The first of these concepts is the “ICEHORSE”, an oil-in-ice skimmer designed to recover surface oil pooled in broken ice fields. The system is designed to submerge and transit below the ice field where it may then be surfaced in a pocket of oil to begin skimming. This allows for remote skimming operations while the boat remains in safer waters and gives the skimmer the ability to position itself in the thickest areas of oil. The initial proof-of-concept system has seen further development with the goal being a commercially available product.
The “Autonomous Oil Skimmer” is designed to be used with any vessel-based skimming system to improve the efficiency of recovery operations. Our proprietary control algorithm collects oil thickness data from a sensor and then directs and tracks the oil recovery operation autonomously. Collection data may be remotely accessed, allowing for centralized project oversight of multiple resources. Part of this effort included the evaluation of different oil sensors and the development of algorithms to incorporate the sensor data into the control system.
This paper discusses some of the design challenges of each system as well as the results of testing, and plans for further development.
The Next Generation of Planning for Offshore Oil Spill Response
Authors: Caplis John , Krieger Andrew 
Published: December 2017

ABSTRACT 2017-333:
In 2014, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) commissioned a study to inform an update of Oil Spill Response Plan (OSRP) regulations for offshore oil and gas facilities and pipelines at Title 30, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 254. The study, Oil Spill Response Equipment Capability Analysis, was conducted by a team led by Booz Allen Hamilton (Booz Allen), with support from RPS Group (formerly ASA Sciences), Environmental Research Consulting (ERC), and SEA Consulting. In close coordination with BSEE, the Booz Allen team reviewed eleven worst case discharge (WCD) scenarios in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and Pacific Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Regions. The study, which involved literature reviews, oil spill modeling, and benchmarking against foreign and domestic regulatory regimes, concluded in February 2016, and highlighted many areas for improving the requirements for response capabilities in the OSRPs.
This paper focuses on the key spill modeling methodologies, observations, and results in the Oil Spill Response Equipment Capability Analysis study, and its use of a concept of operations (CONOPS) for the application of various oil spill countermeasures in response to a WCD. The modeling results provided both new insights and reaffirmed many principles that have long guided oil spill response operations. The CONOPS systematically rolls them up into an offshore-based construct for employing multiple countermeasures in ways that will most effectively reduce oil contact with the environment. This effort did not attempt to quantify environmental impacts or provide guidance on applying countermeasures based upon a net environmental benefits analysis (NEBA) or spill impact mitigation analysis (SIMA). Decision-making for implementing the CONOPS will still require an additional overlying comparative analysis that evaluates the environmental, cultural, social and economic tradeoffs in order to find the preferred balance of spill countermeasures for a given planning scenario or incident. Regardless, the use of the construct (or CONOPS) as outlined in the study offers sound improvements for response planning involving very large spills in the offshore environment.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRANS-BOUNDARY SPILL RESPONSE COOPERATION ACROSS WEST, CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN AFRICA
Authors: Chazot Clément , Rhodes Anton 
Published: December 2017

IOSC 2017 Abstract: 2017-269 Abstract
The picture today is one of intense oil and gas activity across West, Central and Southern Africa. This is illustrated by the significant increases in crude oil exports over the past fifteen years. This high level of activity has also coincided with, and contributed to, a large increase in the level of shipping in the region.
Such level of oil exploration, production, and transportation, means that there exists a threat of oil spills occurring. In response to this risk, the Global Initiative for West, Central, and Southern Africa (GI WACAF) was launched in 2006, with the objective of raising standards of oil spill preparedness and response capability across the region.
This paper will describe how the GI WACAF Project cooperates with local stakeholders in order to develop trans-boundary cooperation, and will detail what are the challenges lying ahead in order to make cross-border cooperation fully operational.
The analysis of the trans-boundary exercises organised under the umbrella of the GI WACAF Project between Cameroon and Nigeria (2015) on the one hand, and between Gabon and Congo (2015) on the other hand, emphasises the needs in terms of international cooperation, improved communications, integration of response capabilities at the national and regional levels, and the development of effective incident management structures.
This paper will show that significant steps have been taken to develop National Oil Spill Contingency Plans across the GI WACAF region and that advances in this area have meant countries are now looking beyond their borders and seeking to integrate national contingency plans with their closest neighbours. Information will be presented concerning the 2015 exercises, the key lessons learned and potential developments of trans-boundary cooperation in the future.
Inland Geographic Response Plan (GRP) for Complex, Variable, Limited Access River Settings
Authors: McGowan Greg , Algots Michael , Gravenmier Josh 
Published: December 2017

ABSTRACT 2017-427
Geographic Response Plans (GRPs) are a key tool in response preparedness, but are limited in inland settings, especially in remote areas. Development of a GRP for 200 miles of the Feather River in California required consideration of highly variable seasonal flow conditions, extremely limited access, and numerous sensitive ecological and cultural resources. This setting required adjustments to the typical prioritization of GRP response strategies based on the sensitivity of potentially exposed resources at risk, and instead increased focus on access and infrastructure locations in relation to natural and man-made collection areas. With a highway on one side of the steep-walled canyon, and a state-designated “high-hazard area” for the railroad line on the other, the GRP also needed to consider a wide variety of potentially released material types and source points. The scoping and GRP development was led by a steering committee including the Union Pacific Railroad and BNSF Railway, the U.S. EPA (Region 9), CA Department of Fish and Wildlife Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR), ARCADIS, and numerous regional and local organizations as well as response contractors. The resulting GRP is a pragmatic document that provides critical response information to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of the first 24 – 48 hours of incident response in this challenging environment. This paper discusses the challenges faced and the resultant strategic measures addressing limited access, fast-water booming, resource mapping, and other critical planning parameters to develop a pragmatic and effective GRP.