摘要：Oil spill occurrence during exploration, production and distribution can cause deleterious impact on the environment. Contamination of local streams/rivers, farmlands, forest resources and biodiversity in oil producing areas presents strong significant possibility of significant harm to human health. Geo-information technologies present new opportunities for assessing stress environment and ways of determining exposure susceptibility in such areas. The study assesses the geographical distribution of oil-spills cluster and pattern using three geospatial techniques with ground data at 443 oil-spill incident sites from 1985-2008. The places with high (high-volume/ large impact/close proximity to communities) and low incident (low-volume/less impact/far-distance) are related to the quantity of oil-spills identified within those communities considered susceptible to spill impact and possible exposure. While the average nearest neighborhood analysis showed a probability that oil-spill distribution in the area is clustered (ratio I index indicted that there is <1% likelihood that the clusters are as a result of random chance. These findings will help to combat the environmental problems and risks of prolong exposure to petroleum hydrocarbons by addressing future incidents or relocating oil facilities/communities and positioning of rapid response strategies.
关键词：Oil Spills;GIS Analysis;Third Party Damage;Interdiction;Pollutant Linkages
