What EMSA offers

The EMSA CleanSeaNet satellite service offers all EU coastal Member States, Iceland and Norway (hereafter referred to as coastal States) a near real time (NRT) marine oil spill and vessel detection service.  The service is based on analysed radar satellite imagery acquired by the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites, Envisat and Radarsat 1 and 2. Once available, images will also be acquired from the Sentinel satellite. Additional sensors are used as appropriate. The service is free of charge to all Coastal States and it covers all European sea areas.

The service, which is integrated within the national and regional oil pollution surveillance and response chains, aims at strengthening operational response for accidental and deliberate discharges from ships as well as assisting coastal States to locate and identify polluters in areas under their jurisdiction.

The analysed satellite imagery is available to the relevant coastal State operational contact points within 30 minutes after satellite overpass. In the case of a detected oil slick, an alert message is delivered to the operational contact point. The alert message can be transmitted via a phone call, an email, or an SMS, depending on which alert means the coastal State has defined. Roughly 2000 images are ordered and analysed per year.

Vessel detection is becoming a more prominent feature of analysis of satellite imaging.  When a vessel is detected on in a satellite image, the identity of the vessel can often be determined through correlating the satellite data with vessel traffic reports (SafeSeaNet).

Satellite image analysis can link oil spills to individual vessels; if the vessel is also identifiable from vessel reports, this enhances the likelihood that Member States’ will be able to determine which vessel(s) are polluting and to take action in response to this (e.g. verifying the spill, inspecting the vessel on entry into port). 

Each coastal State has access to the CleanSeaNet service through a dedicated user interface. This web map interface tool allows the viewing of all low resolution images; full resolution images are delivered by EMSA upon request.  In addition, from December 2010, the user will be able to access a wide range of supplementary information through the interface.  This will include features such as permanent vessel detection, oil drift modelling (forecasting and backtracking), optical images, and oceanographic and meteorological information.