Modelling and Remote Sensing of Oil Spill in the Mediterranean Sea: A Case Study on Baniyas Power Plant Oil Spill

An oil leakage occurred from one of the fuel tanks at the Baniyas thermal station as a result of cracks and wear that led to the leakage of fuel on August 23, 2021. The oil entered into the Mediterranean Sea, and travelled a path toward Cyprus port by the month of September. These spills are observed on a set of periodic Sentinel—1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images acquired between August 24 and September 5, 2021. The oil spill trajectory is tracked using a simplistic mathematical model based on the random walk technique. Wind and ocean current information on the selected study region with 1 Hr. temporal resolution is used to input the model. Accuracy of prediction by the proposed model is evaluated using two performance metrics: Mean Square Error (MSE) and Centroid Skill Score (CSS). The simulated trajectory is in good agreement with that observed in the periodic Sentinel-1 images of the oil spill incident.