Newsletter
June 2011

Personnel News[back to top]

Haiwei Shen providing OILMAP and CHEMAP training

Haiwei Shen provided OILMAP and CHEMMAP training to technicians from Zhejiang Maritime Safety Administration (ZJMSA) and its five subsidiaries, 25-28 April. OILMAP and CHEMMAP, complete with seamless connection to ASA-s Environmental Data Server, will provide rapid technical support to ZJMSA in the event of a spill emergency.

Eileen Graham was in Louisiana for most of April as part of ASA's effort to coordinate offshore sampling in the Gulf of Mexico, collecting data related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Working out of the NOAA Natural Resource Damage Assessment offices in New Orleans, she organized field teams on three vessels - two targeting planktonic organisms and a third targeting small nekton.

As an invited member of the State of Rhode Island Planning Department's Wind Energy Facility Siting Advisory Group, Dan Mendelsohn participated in a series of workshops to review the current state of the practice and develop a set of standards for facility siting within the state from which the 39 municipal governments could take guidance in developing their local wind ordinances. The goal is to make the wind energy siting process more consistent, fair and predictable within the state.

Kelly Knee made two presentations at the 2011 NOAA Coastal GeoTools conference, 24-26 March, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The first described development of the Abu Dhabi Coastal Resources Atlas and Environmental Vulnerability Atlas and included a demonstration of the final product. The second presentation was a demonstration of the Environmental Data Connector for ArcGIS 10 during the GeoTools showcase. This demonstration showed the process of connecting to THREDDS and SOS data servers from ArcGIS 10 and browsing, subsetting, downloading, visualizing and animating environmental data.

Haiwei Shen providing OILMAP training

Haiwei Shen provided OILMAP training to Mr. Deia Eldin Osman Hagahmed and Mr. Mohammed Mustafa Elhaj from Petrodar Operating Company (PDOC) in Egypt at Briseco, Beijing, 9-12 May. The training covered in-depth discussions of oil spill modeling and risk assessment studies. OILMAP will be used to assist PDOC in emergency response and assessing spill risks to sensitive areas including coral reefs, salt marshes, and mangroves.

Craig Swanson and Eduardo Yassuda participated in the International Symposium on Outfall Systems held 15-19 May in Mar del Plata, Argentina. The main objectives of the Symposium were to advance the science and technology of all aspects of discharges from outfalls and their design, and to facilitate communication among the diverse groups of practitioners, regulators, and financing agencies in this area. They presented 5 papers at the Symposium; to view the papers go to: www.asascience.com/about/publications/index.shtml

ASA performed a study of hypothetical surface and subsurface oil spills from wells off the coast of China in the South China Sea for Husky Oil China Ltd. The study provided an analysis of model-predicted oil transport and weathering using ASA-s blowout model and spill impact model application package (SIMAP). Training conducted by Haiwei Shen at Husky covered the background and principles of the blowout model and SIMAP, model setup and results for this study.

Craig Swanson attended the Rhode Island Energy and Environmental Leaders' Day sponsored by U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse held in Washington, DC on 4 May. The purpose of the conference was to convene leaders of Rhode Island's environmental, energy, and clean industry communities to examine issues critical to the health of the Ocean State with federal policy makers up to the Cabinet Secretary level.

IOSC Conference

ASA had a large contingent at this year's International Oil Spill Conference held 23-26 May in Portland, Oregon. Debbie French McCay, Chris Galagan, Eric Comerma and Eileen Graham represented the Rhode Island office, Haiwei Shen represented the Shanghai office, and Camila Cantagallo from the SãPaulo office rounded out the ASA attendees. Debbie and Eileen presented a poster on real-time modeling and ephemeral data collection during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Debbie also gave a talk discussing biological impact modeling for oil spills. To view Debbie's paper go to: www.asascience.com/about/publications/index.shtml

Eric Comerma attended the Safer Seas conference 10-12 May in Brest, France. In the "4th International Workshop on Technologies for Search and Rescue and other Emergency Marine Operations" he presented a prototype of SAROPS 2.0, a web-based GIS operational implementation of the U.S. Coast Guard Search and Rescue planning tool.

From 24 May to 2 June, Kelly Knee and the HydroqualASA team in Dubai worked with Dubai Municipality to kick off Phase 2 of the Dubai Operational Forecasting Model project

Craig Swanson participated in the USEPA National Beach Conference held in Miami, Florida 15-17 March. The conference was designed to provide a national framework for discussion of beach water quality issues, exchange of information, and coordination of efforts in research and decision making. Craig presented Modeling of Bacterial Transport and Fate at Southport Beach, Connecticut at the poster session.

Trevor Gilbert of APASA was interviewed in May by BBC Radio in the UK as part of their broadcasting feature on WWII shipwrecks and the potential to cause marine pollution, called "Peak Leak". The BBC program details are at: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010drl1. You can download the podcast at: www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/costearth

ASA and Waterborne Transportation Institute of China will be doing international collaborative work on oil spill and chemical spill modeling for river systems. This work will involve sharing modeling technology, developing new tools and exchanging visitors.

ASA South America Atheletic Dept.

The newly created ASA Athletic Department in São Paulo completed the 2011 Fila Night Fly, a 10 km run on 7 May.

Camila Cantagallo, Renan Ribeiro, André P. Rodrigues and Ana Carolina Lammardo attended the "SBO - Brazilian Symposium of Oceanography" conference in Santos, São Paulo State, Brazil from 17-20 April. It was organized by Oceanography Institute of São Paulo University, and the focus was to discuss the relationship of oceanography and public policy.

In May, Eoin Howlett attended the first meeting of the newly formed Interagency Ocean Observation Committee (IOOC) DMAC Steering Team. The DMAC ST offers guidance and expert opinions on the development and implementation of the data management component of the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). Eoin is one of the non-federal members serving on the committee beside government experts from numerous federal agencies. For more information visit www.iooc.us/committee-news/dmac/

Eoin Howlett with the MPA of Singapore

Eoin Howlett worked with staff from the Engineering and Planning division and Port Operations division of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) in February. MPA uses ASA's SARMAP, OILMAP, and CHEMMAP software for search and rescue and pollution response.

Eoin Howlett, Haiwei Shen and Xiongping Zhang with the SOA in Beijing

Eoin Howlett, Haiwei Shen and Xiongping Zhang visited State of Oceanic Administration (SOA) in Beijing, China in April. Eoin presented ASA's oil spill and search and rescue work to the officers at SOA. Both sides expressed interest in potential collaborative work.

Andrew Bird

Andrew Bird, software engineering student and intern at ASA, competed in the RoboBoat Competition hosted in Virginia Beach, Virginia in June. The RoboBoat Competition is a student robotics challenge in which teams race autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) of their own design through an aquatic obstacle course. Go to http://roboboat.org/ for more information.

Nicole Whittier Mulanaphy and Chen Xuan from CATS

Nicole Whittier Mulanaphy provided SARMAP training to Chen Xuan from the China Academy of Transportation Sciences (CATS) in June. The training covered in-depth discussions on SAR modeling and the use of SARMAP. CATS utilizes SARMAP to assist with transportation safety.

New Office[back to top]

Asia Pacific ASA has opened a new office in Townsville, located in tropical northeast Australia. The APASA Townsville base will assist in servicing industry and government clients in the expanding shipping, coastal and mining developments of northern Australia and will be the prime base for the APASA Response 24/7 spill modelling service.


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