OGC IOGP/IPIECA Recommended Practice for a Common Operating Picture for Oil Spill Response. Version 1.0.

Abstract

Responding to an oil spill requires access to and understanding of many types of information. Effective, coordinated operations for the response are based on a shared, common picture of the situation. Interoperability provides shared situational awareness of the crisis and the response activities. What is needed is a common picture of reality for different organizations that have different views of the spill so that they all can deal with it collectively. Recent oil spills have provided lessons learned and recommendations on forming a Common Operating Picture for oil spill response. Through a joint project, industry is responding to the call, moving from recommendations to reusable best practices supported by open standards that can be deployed quickly in any region of the globe. This architecture report is part of The International Association of Oil & Gas Producers and IPIECA Oil Spill Response - Joint Industry Project (IOGP–IPIECA OSR-JIP) to produce a recommended practice for GIS/mapping in support of oil spill response and for the use of GIS technology and geospatial information in forming a “Common Operating Picture” to support management of the response. Interoperability seems to be at first a technical topic, but in fact, it is about organization. Interoperability seems to be about the integration of information. What it’s really about is the coordination of organizational behavior. The Oil Spill Response Common Operating Picture (OSR COP) project seeks to facilitate the coordination of organizational response to any oil spill in the future.