The Lempert-Keene-Seastrand Oil Spill Prevention and Response Act of 1990 established the Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR) and provides continuous funding. OSPR is within the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) and “retains the CDFG’s public trustee and custodial responsibility for protecting and managing the State’s fish, wildlife and plants (http://www.dfg.ca.gov/ospr/index.html)."GIS was originally used for quick and accurate production of bioloical resource maps of California's coastal and marine environment. It is now used to assess damages from an oil spill event, to look at a habitat after a spill occurs for the impact of how much of the shoreline was involved and to determine the extent of the impact, to review the plans for readiness and preparedness, as well as support the CDFG's Inland Pollution Response Program.
Six oil spill Area Contigency Plans (ACP) that span the California coastline from Oregon to Mexico have been produced. Within each ACP, special GIS layers for coastal oil spil planning and response have been created. Data sets include shoreline Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI), the California Natural Diversity Database, coastal sensitvitiy sites from Californis statewide ACP, site specific response strategies, statewide beach access points, and statewide pre-determined operational division boundaries. Federal law requires that ACPs be tested at regular intervals through drills and exercises and OSPR regularly provides GIS support to the drills and exercises program.With emergency spill response specifically, a unifed multi-agency emergeny response Incident Command System (ICS) is employed for organization and management. A large involves several dedicated GIS personnel with full GIS capabilities; GIS technical specialists are traditionally deployed in the command center as part of the planning branch (http://www.slc.ca.gov/Division_Pages/MFD/Prevention_First/Documents/PF2K6/PF2K6%20PAPERS/Muskat%20paper.pdf)"
GIS is now fully integrated into oil spill prevention and response in California. During an oil spill emergency, large amounts of data are generated and the ability to import and display data layers provides the ICS with detailed information and a better position for decision making. GIS is routinely used to track the progress of the emergency response, help guide daily activities, post response for the cooperative natural resource damage assessment, as well as for drills and other planning and prevention purposes (http://www.slc.ca.gov/Division_Pages/MFD/Prevention_First/Documents/PF2K6/PF2K6%20PAPERS/Muskat%20paper.pdf)."
*Pictures from http://www.dfg.ca.gov/ospr/response/rtk/planning/gis.html
*Pictures from http://www.dfg.ca.gov/ospr/response/rtk/planning/gis.html
