PhD student Safaa' Alawadhi is using drone, aircraft and satellite-based remote sensing to develop efficient and responsive methods to assist in mapping and managing oil spills. As long as we continue to use fossil fuels there will also continue to be the associated risk of spills and leaks, with the potential to cause significant environmental and economic impact. The ongoing development of methods to monitor and respond to any such incident is therefore extremely important. PhD student Safaa' Alawadhi is engaged in research to develop new methods to map and characterise crude oil spills in the marine environment using optical remote sensing techniques. Safaa' is using a combination of lab-based spectroscopy, existing airborne and satellite datasets covering historic oil spill events, and drone-based remote sensing under controlled conditions to develop new approaches to mapping the extent and composition of spills. Safaa's fieldwork has involved constructing two sets of environments (coastal and marine) to mimic oil spill events in seawater and in beach soils. Data acquisition was undertaken using a range of drone based sensors over small targets of known crude oil types against backgrounds of both sand and water. Standard RGB cameras were deployed for the initial identification of oil and the characterisation of it’s extent. By detecting the thermal characteristics of hydrocarbons, estimates of the thickness of oil patches can be made, which can provide further information about how long these oil patches will remain present in the sea. Therefore an XT-2 thermal camera was deployed alongside a 9- multispectral camera (SAL Maia S2), 905nm LiDAR and NERC FSF's VNIR-SWIR Headwall hyperspectral imager to assess the capabilities of these various sensors in identifying crude oil of different types and discriminating between thicker and thinner oil patches. Such information can aid in directing where operational clean up measures are urgently required to contain large scale oil spills in the sea. We have been very happy to provide Safaa' with initial drone training, data acquisition and workstation support. Safaa' has been kind enough to assist us as an expert demonstrator on a number of taught field courses. This article was published on 2024-06-25
