Oil spill disasters have been one of the major concerns of the marine world for a long time now. They are commercial and environmental catastrophes. Recently, the number of large oil spill incidents has progressively reduced but risk of major spill incident still remain high because of more and more mega-size vessels. Major oil spills are raising more concerns across the world because of the significant negative and long-term impacts on the marine environment and eventually human health, as well as the difficulties in spill prevention, control and remediation. This study has attempted to get insight of the current methodologies and technologies in oil spill response and countermeasures, identified the existing knowledge gaps and technical challenges, and proposed a new strategic and decision making framework and provided the recommendations for improving oil spill response capacity and effectiveness.
Dr Ann Zhang is a senior technical adviser of the International Tanker Owner Pollution Found (ITOPF) . She has a BSc and an MSc in environmental engineering and a PhD in chemical engineering. Her doctoral research investigated alternative energy storage systems using nano-composites derived from carbon materials. Since joining ITOPF, Ann has attended a number of incidents worldwide. She has been involved in various aspects of post-incident activities, including impact assessment, at sea and aerial surveillance, shoreline clean-up, water sampling and claim assessment. Ann also worked as a research fellow at University of Leeds. She investigated the interactions between model cell membranes and inorganic nano-materials in aqueous environment. Through her seven years' postgraduate research experience, she has built a comprehensive understanding of the analytic techniques and the approaches to problem-solving. She also co-supervised MSc and PhD students, and collaborated with industrial and academic partners in many parts of the world.