A forecasting solution to the oil spill problem based on a hybrid intelligent system

  • Authors:

  • Bruno Baruque;Emilio Corchado;Aitor Mata;Juan M. Corchado

  • Affiliations:

  • Civil Engineering Department, University of Burgos, C/Francisco de Vitoria s/n, 09006 Burgos, Spain;Departamento de Informática y Automática, University of Salamanca, Plaza de la Merced s/n, 37008 Salamanca, Spain;Departamento de Informática y Automática, University of Salamanca, Plaza de la Merced s/n, 37008 Salamanca, Spain;Departamento de Informática y Automática, University of Salamanca, Plaza de la Merced s/n, 37008 Salamanca, Spain

  • Venue:
  • Information Sciences: an International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Oil spills represent one of the most destructive environmental disasters. Predicting the possibility of finding oil slicks in a certain area after an oil spill can be critical in reducing environmental risks. The system presented here uses the Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) methodology to forecast the presence or absence of oil slicks in certain open sea areas after an oil spill. CBR is a computational methodology designed to generate solutions to certain problems by analysing previous solutions given to previously solved problems. The proposed CBR system includes a novel network for data classification and retrieval. This type of network, which is constructed by using an algorithm to summarize the results of an ensemble of Self-Organizing Maps, is explained and analysed in the present study. The Weighted Voting Superposition (WeVoS) algorithm mainly aims to achieve the best topographically ordered representation of a dataset in the map. This study shows how the proposed system, called WeVoS-CBR, uses information such as salinity, temperature, pressure, number and area of the slicks, obtained from various satellites to accurately predict the presence of oil slicks in the north-west of the Galician coast, using historical data.