Open Data Science Europe workshop 2022

The ships accidents and illegal discharges, commonly called oil spills, are very frequent and present a big harm toward the marine ecosystem. The use of new technologies like satellites is crucial and will significantly help to monitor and assess these oil spills. The present work is based on Sentinel-1 SAR images and aim to take into evidence the extent of the hydrocarbons marine pollution, in a national framing (all the Moroccan Exclusive Economic Zone). About 9.000 images were examined and up to 250 possible cases were detected and mapped from October 2014 to January 2022. A batch process based on the detection of areas of reduced Normalized Radar Cross Section values, and considering corrections, masks, wind field estimation and oil clustering, was implemented to automatize the process. Almost 80% of the cases were detected between Kenitra and Casablanca. The mean distance of detected oil spills from coasts is about 35 km, while the Atlantic Exclusive Economic Zone boundaries are 370 km away from coasts (exempting the area near Canary Islands). To measure the impact of such pollution, a simulation of propagation was made using the NOAA WebGNOME model. This study could aware governmental authorities and decision makers of the amplitude of the damages that may be caused by such phenomena and its impact on the environment.