Multi-Mission Satellite Detection and Tracking of October 2019 Sabiti Oil Spill in the Red Sea

Abstract

A multi-mission satellite remote sensing (MSRS) approach is explored to detect and track leaked oil from the Sabiti oil tanker accident that occurred in the central Red Sea on 11 October 2019 (RSOS-2019). The spilled oil spread rapidly and reached the coastal land near Jeddah, the second largest city of KSA, on 17 October. Different oil spill detection algorithms were implemented on SAR and optical sensor-based satellite images to track the oil spill. Sentinel-1 SAR images were most efficient at detecting the spread and thickness of RSOS-2019, but their spatio-temporal coverage greatly limits their use for tracking the oil movement. The spread and propagation of oil were well captured by Sentinel-2 images up to three weeks after the accident day, in agreement with the SAR images. MODIS successfully detected the narrow patch of oil that was leaked on the incident day and the widespread oil patches two days after. Landsat-8 RGB composite and thermal infrared images captured the oil spill on 13 October. By filtering clouds from the Meteosat images through sequential analysis, the spread and movement of the oil patches were efficiently tracked on 13 October. PlanetScope images available between 12 and 17 October enabled tracking of the oil near the coastal waters. The inferred oil spill movements are consistent with the ocean currents as revealed by a high-resolution regional ocean reanalysis. Our results demonstrate the potential of the MSRS approach to detect and track oil spills in the open and coastal waters of the Red Sea in near real-time.

Oil spill risk analysis for the NEOM shoreline

“…Met-ocean data are extracted from an extensively-validated reanalysis of the circulation in the Red Sea. For more details related to the validation exercises, readers are referred to recent works by Hoteit et al 29 , Vankayalapati et al 30 , Wang et al 31 , 32 , Krokos et al 33 , Zhan et al 34 , Yao and Hoteit 35 . The simulated fields have been shown to suitably describe the general oceanic and atmospheric circulations of the Red Sea at the highest available resolution 29 – 38 .…”

Leveraging emerging technologies to enable environmental monitoring and accountability in conflict zones

“…28 For example, because oil creates a slick surface and thus alters the way in which radio waves are reflected off of water, radar imagery has been used extensively to detect oil spills, including in conflict-affected areas. 29 More recently, SAR has also been applied to obtain rough estimates for urban damage assessments. 30…”