Last Nov. 13, a storm-battered oil tanker named Prestige, carrying
roughly 20 million gallons of oil in its belly, began to leak off the coast
of Spain.
Spanish officials decided to tow the vessel offshore, where, on Nov. 19, it
broke in two and foundered in 2-mile deep waters – but not before spilling more
than 2 million gallons.
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Underwater images from a French submarine revealed ribbons of tar-like oil
bubbling toward the surface from a number of cracks in the sunken vessel’s hull,
threatening to blanket Spain’s Galice coast in black sludge.
Enter Applied Science Associates, a Narragansett company that uses computer
models to forecast how and where an oil spill will spread.
The company’s modeling system takes myriad data – currents, tides, weather
patterns, wind speed and direction, water temperature and salinity – and crunches
them together, rendering a three-dimensional map of a spill. The result is a
Windows-based, real-time system to monitor oil spills and predict their movement.
The system has been used to assist in the planning of environmental cleanup
efforts, for example. In the case of the Prestige spill, ASA’s model showed
that the oil would take about five days to reach the sea surface and another
week to reach the shoreline.
ASA was founded in 1979, a spin off from environmental research at the University
of Rhode Island. Malcolm Spaulding, a URI professor of ocean engineering, co-founded
the company and still serves as a senior advisor.
“Most of the environmental modeling work we did then was on mainframe computers
and punchcards,” Spaulding said. “The PC has revolutionized the business, leading
to large increases in capabilities and reductions in cost.”
In 1984, ASA was hired by The Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., which operates
the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, to write the first-ever PC-based oil spill
response system.
Today, roughly 40 percent of the company’s revenue – about $4 million in 2002
– represents sales to the oil and gas industries, according to Eoin Howlett,
the chief executive officer of ASA.
The company’s computer modeling also is used for environmental-impact analysis,
providing “what if” scenarios for predicting the ecological effects of, say,
a new bridge or a dredging project.
For example, ASA provided a number of models forecasting water-quality impacts
if a container port had been constructed at Quonset Point.
It also has provided services to the Narragansett Bay Commission to study
the effects of its combined sewer overflow project. ASA can plug in scenarios
of rainfall and subsequent bacteria that would flow into the bay, and project
what the impact would be on shellfishing, for example.
ASA also has provided modeling to the owners of the Brayton Point power plant
in Somerset, Mass., which has been cited by environmental regulators for discharging
hot water into Mount Hope Bay. ASA’s model can determine, for example, what
the ecological effect would be if the discharge temperature were reduced by
a degree or two.
Over the past few years, ASA has developed new programs aimed at two growing
markets: port security and search and rescue.
This year the firm has developed a new “crisis management software” application
for the U.S. Coast Guard. The product offers the ability to track the movement
and impacts of released pollutants from a security breach – a bioterrorist attack
at a large port, for example.
And the company has designed search-and-rescue programs for port authorities
in Spain, Singapore and Hong Kong.
“Search and rescue is really a growing area for us,” Howlett said.
ASA now has about 40 employees, most of them with degrees in engineering,
oceanography, geology or computer science from URI, Brown University, MIT and
other schools. It has offices in Brazil, Australia and Europe.
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