Abstract
There has been increasing offshore oil exploration, drilling, and production activities, as well as a huge amount of petroleum being transported by tankers and pipelines through the ocean and costal environment. Assessment must be made of the potential risk of damage resulting from the exploration, development and transportation activities. This is achieved through predictive impact evaluations of the fate of hypothetical or real oil spills. VVhen an oil spill occurs, planning and execution of cleanup measures also require the capability to forecast the short-term and long-term behavior of the spilled oil. A great amount of effort has been spent by government agencies, oil industries, and researchers over the past decade to develop more realistic models for oil spills. Numerous oil spill models have been developed and applied, most of which attempt to predict the oil spill fate and behavior. For an actual contingency planning, the oil fate and behavior model should be combined with an oil spill incident model, an environmental impact and risk model and a contingency planning model. The purpose of this review study is to give an overview of existing oil spill models that deal with the physical, chemical, biological, and socia-economical aspects of the incident, fate, and environmental impact of oil spills. After reviewing the existing models, future research needs are suggested. In the study, available oil spill models are separated into oil spill incident, oil spill fate and behavior, environmental impact and risk, and contingency planning models. The processes of the oil spill fate and behavior are reviewed in detail and the characteristics of existing oil spill fate and behavior models are examined and classified so that an ideal model may be identified. Finally, future research needs are discussed.
