Mary Jacketti, a PhD candidate in the College of Engineering’s Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, was featured as a Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) Scholar for her research on expanding the capabilities of the Subsurface Oil Simulator (SOSim) model to track sunken oil.
Jacketti is a research member of the University of Miami Water Quality Engineering Laboratory and one of James Englehardt’s — a professor in the College of Engineering’s Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering — graduate students. Together, they expanded the SOSim model to locate and track sunken oil during emergency response scenarios following instantaneous or continuous oil releases in rivers, bays, lakes and oceans. They are using Bayesian inference with field observations on the sunken oil’s location and concentration and bathymetric data to predict the location and movement of sunken oil.
SOSim can be used to track sunken or submerged oil in the water column following a well blowout, vessel release or pipeline break, and will complement existing emergency response tools and better assist recovery efforts.
