Overview
Dr Reinaldo Garcia from Hydronia LLC recently presented a three-day course on Computer Assisted Oil Spill Environmental Assessments in Land and Water at the Wessex Institute, to a group of participants from Croatia, Kenya, Poland and the UK.
This course provided an insight into the main processes that govern overland and water oil spills and offers practical training to perform oil spill simulations using the OilFlow2D computational model. The course also offered hands-on experience in setting up and running a variety of scenarios including pipeline spills hitting sensitive areas, and spills in sea and riverine environments, allowing us to determine where the oil will go, given the spill location and volume.
Course Topics
The course covered the following topics:
- Evaporation, emulsification, dispersion and sinking.
- Change of physical properties such as viscosity and density.
- Influence of the wind, currents and waves in the spreading processes.
- Advantages and limitations of modelling.
- Methods of control of spills.
- Dispersants.
- Application of simulation models for the design of contingency plans.
- Creating oil spill trajectory animations.
- Use GIS tools to create oil spill location maps.
Presenter
Reinaldo Garcia is a former Research Fellow at the Wessex Institute. He obtained his MSc in Hydraulic Engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique Montreal, Canada and his PhD from the University of Central Venezuela. He is a consultant for the World Bank and the Interamerican Development Bank. Dr Garcia is the creator and leader of the development team of the OilFlow2D and RiverFlow2D flexible mesh models. He has more than 38 years of experience in developing and applying models to simulate oil spills, river flow, and hazard assessments. Dr Garcia has worked in hundreds of modelling projects in the USA, and in over 20 other countries in Europe, Asia, and South America, and is considered an international expert in the field. Dr Garcia has taught more than 50 international courses on environmental modelling worldwide. He lectured at the University of Miami, Florida from 2004 to 2006. In 2006 he was appointed Senior Research Scientist at the Applied Research Centre of Florida International University (FIU). Presently Dr Garcia shares his research activities at the Florida International University Institute of Environment with his model development and consulting at Hydronia USA and Hydronia Europe, private firms that commercialize OilFlow2D and other computer models.
For further information and details of the next event please contact:
Jane Chantler
Wessex Institute
Ashurst Lodge, Ashurst
Southampton, SO40 7AA
Tel: 44 (0) 238 029 3223
Fax: 44 (0) 238 029 2853
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Computer Assisted Oil Spill Environmental Assessments in Land and Water 2019 Photos
Wessex Institute