Baltic Sea

• GoF is a shallow brackish water area of 30 000 square kilometers with an average depth of only 37,5 meters.

• GoF water mass is only 5 % of the Baltic Sea water mass.

• Four major Baltic Sea rivers, Kymi, Vuoksi, Neva and Narva all have an outlet to the easternmost part of the Gulf of Finland.

• Especially springs and autumns in the Gulf may witness vast flocks of several species of migrating birds.

Gulf of Finland

Gulf of Finland

St PetersburgTallinn

HelsinkiKotka

• Nearly every winter the Gulf of Finland, especially the easternmost part of the Gulf, is completely covered with ice, average thickness from 40 to 60 cm giving navigational skills very specific demands.

Gulf of Finland

Winter in Gulf of Winter in Gulf of FinlandFinland

• Technical Research Center of Finland has made (2002, revision 2004) a research of the predicted density of maritime transport in the Gulf of Finland with oil transport as a specific topic.

• Research indicates that the Gulf is becoming an area of intensive vessel traffic. Oil and oil products comprise considerable part of cargo transported.

• Oil transports in year 2000 were about 50 million tons; research indicates that the amount will increase by quadruple to nearly 200 million tons in year 2010. Size of the ships has also increased drastically and this trend will continue, we are expecting oil cargoes of 150 000 ton any coming year.

Latest prognosis (11/2004 and 5/2005 indicates that the amount of oil transported year 2010 would be as much as 200 million tons.

This would mean over 6 000 tankers of ~ 32 000 tdw every year in loaded condition in the Gulf of Finland.

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

1987 1997 2001 2002 2003 2010

Total

Helsinki

Sköldvik

Kotka

Hamina

Vistino Bay

Vysotsk

Primorsk

St Petersburg

Batareynaja

Ust-Luga

Lomonosov

Aseri

Kunda

Vene-Balti

Miiduranna

Tallinn

Oil transportation in the Gulf of Finland in 1987-2003and estimated development by 2010

Year

Mill

ion

to

ns

Latest prognosis 2005Sillamäe Primorsk 2nd others

A typical 100 000 TDW Crude Oil tanker, regular visitor in the Gulf of

Finland

MT ”Tempera”, 110 000 TDW DAT (Dual Acting Tanker) en route to Primorsk in winter 2003-2004

GOFREP reporting areas, Traffic Separation Zones and crossing traffic areas

Crossing traffic

In several ”hot spots” the traffic lanes are crossing increasing the risk of accidents with danger of oil spills. It is therefore no wonder there is an increasing concern of the preparedness to act in the non desired case of oil pollution in the area. Further risk to maritime safety will be the construction works and laying of the Gas Pipe Line from Vyborg to Germany, planned to start 2007.

Source: Tacis, Baltic Pipeline System; Oil Spill Analysis, March 2000.

Oil Spill spreading in the Baltic Sea

Tacis BPS project research year 2000 indicates that in case of Oil Spill in the Gulf of Finland response and clean up procedures must be activated immediately. Due to this all persons must be trained thoroughly by all means available to meet the challenge. International cooperation is essential.

Modern information- and communication technology provides excellent opportunities to train any maritime transport related spill or crises incident. Exercises may be saved for further research and contingency plans can be revised accordingly. This technology can be used also in real crisis incidents.

Aerial surveillance and other monitoring results (1997-2003) of recorded oil spills around Finnish coast clearly indicate that major area of spillage is the Gulf of Finland

After saying all this we also have to be realistic and support the development and activity which is providing much potential and prosperity in this area.

We must be supportive and wish for the best but at the same time we also must be alert and prepared for the worst.

MT ”Mega Borg”

This is something we don’t want to see in the Gulf of Finland, but something we must be prepared to respond

Acknowledging the increasing need of contingency and preparedness due to growing transportation of oil and oil products in the Gulf of Finland three major maritime training institutes, Admiral Makarov State Maritime Academy, Estonian Maritime Academy and Kotka Maritime Institutes backed by the cities and authorities of their location in St. Petersburg, Kotka and Tallinn have taken the challenge to meet the new requirements in oil spill preparedness by establishing three partly EU funded Interreg III A projects.

EU funded transnational projects on Gulf of Finland maritime safety and marine environment protection cooperation

Network of three Crisis Management Simulator Centers

www.gofmec.fi

Partners• City of Kotka, Finland

• South Kymenlaakso Vocational Institute, Kotka, Finland

• Admiral Makarov State Maritime Academy, St. Petersburg, Russia

• St. Petersburg Committee of Nature Use, Ecological Safety and Environment Protection, Russia

• Estonian Maritime Academy, Tallinn, Estonia

• Harjumaa regional Rescue Center, Tallinn, Estonia

• Kymenlaakso Polytechnic, Kotka, Finland

• Kymenlaakso Regional Rescue Center, Kotka, Finland

• Kotka Rescue Center, Kotka, Finland

• South-East Finland Environment Center

• Kymenlaakso Region, Finland

www.gofmec.fi

The projects are aimed to acquire and unite three national Crisis Management Simulator Centers (CMSC) as one network capable to simultaneously train contingency, response and clean up procedures and personnel in the same spill scenario in all three countries.

All projects also have an objective to harmonize oil spill related training courses as well as share training scenarios, databases and expertise.

Kotka CMSC Tallinn CMSC

Co-operation & information platform

St.Petersburg CMSC

Network Server & Local Server

Local ServerLocal Server

National expertise National expertise

National expertise

Each national Crisic Management Simulator Center (CMSC) is composed of

• PISCES 2 Oil Spill simulator,

• NaviTrainer Pro 4000 navigation simulator with added helicopter simulation function and

•Vessel Traffic Management Simulator and

• Real Time AIS information in case of actual crisis.

All this creates excellent possibilities for realistic and comprehensive training of all bodies involved in contingency planning, response activities and clean up procedures.

CONTINGENCY PREPAREDNESS RESPONSE

• In the first stage the three Simulator Centers will, in trilateral or bilateral exercises, work together by means of video conference equipment.

• This kind of communication can be arranged quite easily, but it has some operational shortages. For example, all changes in data in St Petersburg CMSC must be fed manually in exactly same manner in Kotka and Tallinn CMSCs.

• Any misunderstanding of order or information, or incorrect data input could cause wrong result in training. That is why partners are already looking one step forward.

• In the next stage of co-operation all three CMSCs will be connected together by creating an intranet platform of Internet. Admiral Makarov CMSC would work as the main controller of the exercise. With proper database servers, routers and firewalls there would be a network of three CMSCs working like one. Any alteration of information or data would automatically be updated in other two simulators.

• This kind of operation gives extra added value to the operations, it also totally deletes the possibility of wrong manually fed data while running the exercise.

• It will be the first time ever that three maritime training institutions in three different countries will work in such a close and trusting cooperation.

CMS / OSRS network of each CMSC

Kotka CMSTallinn CMS

• It is clear of course that maritime training institutes alone do not possess all the necessary knowledge and resources to run crisis, for example oil spill incident, response and consequent procedures following the incident.

• We therefore need close cooperation, understanding and support of all parties involved in maritime crisis.

• This includes national and local authorities, maritime authorities, ecological experts, rescue centers and many others.

• Only with good co-operation we will be able to serve all parties involved in maritime crisis management

Helsinki GOFREP Center

Helsinki VTS Center

Gulf of Finland Crisis Management Simulation Network

National CMSC Scenario

CM Simulation Center

Contingency, Response and Recovery expertice

Regional and local expertice and authorities

Logistic expertice

Media management

Environmental, Ecological and Biological expertice

MRCC, VTS and GOFREP

Maritime Authorities

Third Sector participants

Training and planning of

• preparedness

• prevention

• contingency

• response

• recovery

Database maintenance

• resources

• availability

Information platform

• web site

• library

• information exchange

Surfaceor sub-surface

spill

Stationary or moving

Tempera-ture

Volume

Type of Oil

Constant or

Instant.

Surface Current

Wind

Location

MODEL INPUTS

TidalCycle

OSRS INPUTS

Feedback

Spill Data

ObservedData

Analysis Forecast

Movement and Fate Modeling

Environmental Data

Trajectory Analysis

• The cooperation between Admiral Makarov State Maritime Academy, Estonian Maritime Academy and Kotka Maritime institutes, St Petersburg City Committee of Nature Use, Ecological Safety and Environment Protection as well as other partners in the project has been uniquely open, fruitful and object oriented.

• These projects have opened and will open a totally new horizon of cooperation for the benefit of all three countries surrounding our Gulf of Finland.

Thank You !Thank You !

Do visit our website at

www.gofmec.fi