Aerial and satellite surveillance of operational ship pollution in the European seas

摘要

An update of the activities of the Joint Research Centre (JRC), a Directorate General of the European Commission, in the field of long term monitoring sea-based oil pollution are described. JRC has collected all available relevant data concerning sea-based oil pollution from different actors and archives. For the North and Baltic seas, data from aerial surveillance were used and, for this reason, all oil spills are real and confirmed. On the contrary, the data for the Mediterranean and the Black Sea derive from oil spills detected by JRC in archive satellite imagery. We believe that oil spills detected in satellite images are real, even if we will call them "possible oil spills" because they have not been confirmed by an aircraft and or a vessel. For the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, these data represent the only source to assess the problem of sea-based oil pollution in these seas. This paper intends to present a comprehensive view of the long term monitoring of sea-based oil pollution in all the seas around Europe.