Towards improving the simulation of beaching in oil spill models

Oil-shoreline interaction (or “beaching” as commonly referred in literature) is an issue of major concern in oil- spill modeling, due to the significant environmental, social and economic importance of coastal areas. The amount of oil that reaches and stays at the shore, as well as the temporal characteristics of the involved processes –in short– define the oil-spill impact on a specific coastal stretch and are subsequently used to assess this impact. This paper presents and implements a methodology to improve the simulation of beaching in oil spill models, based on the parametrization of shoreline response for different oil types, coastal types and beach properties. The methodology is tested using the MEDSLIK-II model; the evaluation of the expected improvement is based on the intercomparison of model results for the Lebanon spill incident in 2006.