• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.129-137
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• 2013

In order to obtain quantitative basic data for marine oil pollution prevention, the statistics of oil spill incidents in Korea and in the world for 20 years from 1993 to 2012 were collected and analyzed with relation to the number of oil spills and the amount of oil spilt. In Korea for 20 years, total number and average annual number of oil spills were 6,608 cases and nearly 330 cases/year, respectively, and total volume and average annual volume of oils spilt were 57,328 kL and nearly 2,866 kL/year, respectively. Due to major oil spills from oil tankers, annual volumes of oils spilt in Korea were sharply increased to 15,388 kL in 1993, 15,773 kL in 1995, 3,428 kL in 1997 and 13,008 kL in 2007. In case of worldwide oil spills for 20 years, total number and average annual number of oil spills of 8 kL (or 7 tonnes) and above were 420 cases and 21 cases/year, respectively, and total amount and average annual amount of oils spilt 8 kL (or 7 tonnes) and above were about 800,000 kL (or 704,000 tonnes) and about 40,000 kL/year (or 35,200 tonnes/year), respectively. Major oil spills from oil tankers increased massively annual amounts of oils spilt worldwide to about 159,000 kL (or 140,000 tonnes) in 1993, about 147,600 kL (or 130,000 tonnes) in 1994, about 90,900 kL (80,000 tonnes) in 1996, about 81,800 kL (72,000 tonnes) in 1997 and about 76,100 kL (or 67,000 tonnes) in 2002. Obvious correlation between annual number of oil spills and annual amount of oil spilt was not found in both Korea and the world, while both annual number and annual volume tended to decrease with the lapse of year in both Korea and the world, though there were wide fluctuations from year to year in both annual number of oil spills and annual amount of oils spilt worldwide and in Korea for 20 years. From 2008 to 2012 worldwide, there were sharp decreases in both annual number and annual amount of oil spills. In particular, no oil spill of 800 kL (or 700 tonnes) and above occurred in the year of 2012.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.311-323
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• 2023

Oil spill accidents can cause various environmental issues, so it is important to quickly assess the extent and changes in the area and location of the spilled oil. In the case of oil spill detection using satellite imagery, it is possible to detect a wide range of oil spill areas by utilizing the information collected from various sensors equipped on the satellite. Previous studies have analyzed the reflectance of oil at specific wavelengths and have developed an oil spill index using bands within the specific wavelength ranges. When analyzing multiple images before and after an oil spill for monitoring purposes, a significant amount of time and computing resources are consumed due to the large volume of data. By utilizing Google Earth Engine, which allows for the analysis of large volumes of satellite imagery through a web browser, it is possible to efficiently detect oil spills. In this study, we evaluated the applicability of four types of oil spill indices in the area of various land cover using Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument data and the cloud-based Google Earth Engine platform. We assessed the separability of oil spill areas by comparing the index values for different land covers. The results of this study demonstrated the efficient utilization of Google Earth Engine in oil spill detection research and indicated that the use of oil spill index B ((B3+B4)/B2) and oil spill index C (R: B3/B2, G: (B3+B4)/B2, B: (B6+B7)/B5) can contribute to effective oil spill monitoring in other regions with complex land covers.