Protecting Coastal Communities through Civil Maritime Surveillance

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Protecting Coastal Communities through Civil Maritime Surveillance

4.0 OIL SPILL POLLUTION MONITORING
Threats arising from human activities within the coastal zone, either through genuine accidents, negligence or illegal behavior, cannot be ignored when considering environmental security. The risk of a major oil spill or the cumulative impact of persistent minor oil spills and other forms of marine pollution have long been recognized as threatening the balance of coastal communities. Paradoxically policy in this area of environmental security is well developed and has received particular attention in relation to a number of prominent ship casualties and subsequent oil spills.

The MARPOL Convention is the main international convention covering prevention of pollution of the marine environment by ships from operational or accidental causes. The convention has, by and large, been a success however monitoring and enforcement remain key issues and satellite oil spill monitoring services have begun to play a more prominent role in oil pollution monitoring. Earth Observation satellites, such as RADARSAT-1 and its successor RADARSAT-2, can routinely detect oil slicks on the sea surface using C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). SAR instruments are effective in detecting oil slicks because of the microwave signals that they employ. Oil suppresses capillary waves at the sea surface reflecting the microwave energy away from the satellite sensor. The result is that oil on the sea surface is seen as dark or black areas on the satellite radar image.

Figure 1a: Illegal bilge dump from a ship observed off the coast of Iryan Jaya, Indonesia using RADARSAT-1. Source - Radarsat International

Figure 1b: RADARSAT-1 imagery used in coastal surveillance for ship detection. Source – Radarsat International

Figure 1c: Illegal bilge dump from a ship observed in the West Java Sea, Indonesia using RADARSAT-1.

Figure 1d: RADARSAT-1 imagery used in coastal zone monitoring, Surabaya, Eastern Java, Indonesia. Source – Radarsat International
Large oil spills are estimated as representing only 20% of the annual total of oil illegally discharged at sea. Far more detrimental to the environment is a phenomenon that rarely makes the headlines; the accumulation of hundreds of minor oil spills caused by oil/oily water discharges illegally made by ships (bilge dumping). Satellite oil pollution surveillance is ideally suited to provide routine monitoring of bilge dumping from ships and provides visibility of the extent of the problem with respect to MARPOL enforcement.

MARPOL Annex I, Regulation 9 makes the following recommendation to those Countries who are party to the Convention:

“Whenever visible traces of oil are observed on or below the surface of the water in the immediate vicinity of a ship or its wake, Governments of Parties to the Convention should, to the extent they are reasonably able to do so, promptly investigate the facts bearing on the issue of whether there has been a violation….The investigation should include, in particular, the wind and sea conditions, the track and speed of the ship, other possible sources of the visible traces in the vicinity, and any relevant oil discharge records”.

Figure 2: Information needs analysis indicating the role of routine coastal surveillance in MARPOL enforcement.
Any violation of the MARPOL 73/78 Convention within the jurisdiction of any Party to the Convention is punishable either under the law of that Party or under the law of the flag State. Violation can refer to the illegal discharge of oil and / or the failure to maintain equipment and valid international certificates. Violation may be detected at sea in association with the illegal discharge event; by evidence of pollution after the fact (e.g. oil washed ashore); or by inspection of a ship and its records at the next port of call.

Figure 3: A schematic showing the process flow used in the routine operation of oil pollution surveillance and how added value is given by the fusion of information relating to ship profiling, port state control, met-ocean information and environmental vulnerability mapping.
5.0 CONCLUSION
Growing public expectations of coastal and ocean governance could be a significant driver for better public and private access to information on environmental risk. Particularly where those risks relate to:

Environmental asset scarcity arising through environmental degradation or depletion;
Environmental risks arising from natural hazards or technological disasters and;
Environment related tensions and conflicts.

The practical application of good governance requires that community vulnerability to each of these threats is well understood through the development of adequate geographical information infrastructures. The capacity to mitigate threats, guide community responses to loss or degradation and rebuild livelihoods requires a substantial knowledge base, if it is to be sustainable.

A significant step to achieving this may be through investing in information infrastructures that ingest environmental information as part of a routine surveillance, early warning and response network.

Figure 4: Concept schematic of a Regional Environmental Risk Monitoring Information Centre ERMIC with essential component blocks.
The beneficial outcomes of such marine information infrastructures may include the capacity to:

Build knowledge of the environment: any system accumulating data through monitoring of the marine environment should use these data to create knowledge about the quality of the environment and the potential threats to the environment;
Minimise cost burden of information: stakeholder based information systems incorporating a shared cost principle will ensure that the burden of cost is minimised and fairly distributed between actors;
Public, private partnerships: Public and corporate interests can be addressed alongside each other through Government/ Industry partnerships in Earth Observation.
Community based information sharing: information sharing is desirable and feasible through information infrastructures that allow public access to information on environmental risk and threats to the quality of the environment.

The fact that the same geospatial information infrastructures used in conventional security applications can be utilized in the surveillance and monitoring of environmental threats makes their inclusion compelling in any discussion of environmental security. Existing resources tasked with the maintenance of maritime security could be leveraged for the maintenance of environmental security through law enforcement (e.g. marine intelligence, AIS, remote sensing and MARPOL enforcement).

The holy grail of maritime security remains that of developing a Common Operating Picture of the potential threats to civil society through maritime domain awareness. In this respect, environmental security will be no different and the definition of environmental security should be expanded to include what have been termed ‘environmental crimes’. This will assist in developing a comprehensive Common Operating Picture of the state of our environment.

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