Design of surface drifter for the oil spill monitoring

Aim of the paper is to develop and present a stategy of oil spill experiments in the coastal zone based on the use of oil spill drifters. The aim is achived by the following steps, first a review is presented organized in two sections: (i) a brief presentation of the phenomena related to the process of oil spill in the sea; (ii) a review of surface drifters. Then the past experience and review provides the basis for the choice/design of a proper drifter for the design of the best prototype, acheived by working on the shape, the dimensions, the ballast, the equipment and material. For the project planning decisions have to be taken regarding the sampling strategy, the data acquisition and transmission, the buoy deploy position, the number of drifter in the same cluster, the duration of the experiment and the analysis. The design of the oil spill drifter is twofold, to calibrate and validate oil spill models and to propose to the scientific community a sort of protocol for the oil spill experiments, and to build proper drifters to be launched in case of accidents for the oil spill monitoring. At the end of the paper a first launch is described.