Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Recovery efforts during the Deep Water Oil Spill used Information Communication Technologies (ICT) such as remote sensor technology and satellite imagery technology.

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Introduction

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill was a man-made disaster which had devastating effects on its surrounding environment, in particular the natural environment around the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig. Recovery efforts made by the local governments utilized Information Communications Technology (ICT) such as remote sensors and satellite imagery to track and monitor the magnitude of the oil spill. Further detail on how recovery efforts used ICT’s to track and monitor the oil spill as well as its uses in the prevention of future oil spills, including the positives and negatives of the use of ICT will be discussed. Referring to sources such as the scholarly journal ‘Tracking Oil Slicks and Predicting their Trajectories Using Remote Sensors and Models’,  the magazine article ‘Satellite use Growing to Monitor Facilities and Map Spills’ and the national commission report ‘Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling National Commission’. The focus reading ‘Organisations Aiming to Reduce Risk – Worth Broader Exposure’ will be used as a comparison and reference to what other industries have done to prevent disasters in their industry from occurring again.

Background.

Recovery efforts during the Deep Water Oil Spill used Information Communication Technologies (ICT) such as remote sensor technology and satellite imagery technology. Such technology were used in order to monitor the magnitude of the oil spill giving recovery efforts visual data that they could work with as well as a method of being able to obtain the  trajectories of the oil spill in order to prevent further spread of the oil in the water.

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Use of ICT’s to assist in Recovery.

The use of ICT’s such as remote sensor technology and satellite imagery was effectively used by the petroleum industry in previous years prior to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill for exploration purposes. In the event of the oil spill recovery effort teams utilized this same remote sensor technology in order to determine how much oil was spilled, where it reached the shore, and which beaches might be hit next (Pope 2010). This technology allowed recovery teams to effectively survey the spread of oil a lot faster than if it ...

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