OilGuard 2000 Designed To Help Crews Minimize Oil Damage
The trial version of a new Transas product, OilGuard 2000, was officially released by the company last fall. OilGuard 2000 is designed as the information system that may be beneficially used in any Oil Spill Response Center.
The system provides facilities for command center exercise planning, conduct and analysis, pursuant to the requirements of OPA90, MARPOL 73/78, OPRC90.
Development of the OilGuard 2000 has been inspired by the contract with the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) for a "Pollution Incident Simulation Control and Evaluation System" (PISCES). This contract was won by Transas in September 1996.
After the successful FAT and SAT passed in the first half of 1998, the Transas' OilGuard 2000 appeared in the company's product line as a commercial product based on the PISCES software. OilGuard 2000 uses a precise hydrodynamic model of the oil-spill which is integrated in a cartographic shell based on vectorized nautical charts. The model is capable of most realistic representation of all significant processes that take place in an oil-spill including oil spread characteristics, evaporation, sinkage into the water column, burning; and interaction with coastline, booms, skimmers and chemical dispersants. The model takes into account the continuously changing field of currents and other hydro-meteorological information. The OilGuard 2000 provides the user with a unique analyzing tool. Apart from the continuous record of the model-related events and movements of the oil spill response participants, the program is provided with facilities for comprehensive report preparation. The modern concept of open architecture software is implemented with the OilGuard 2000, which makes the system easily adaptable to the particular requirements of any user. The OilGuard 2000 operator does not have to possess special computer skills other than the basic MS Windows user skills. The system can therefore be used immediately by subject area specialists. The minimum hardware required for the OilGuard 2000 is a Pentium 2000 with 64 MB RAM.
