Engineering & Environmental Research

DF Dickins Associates, LLC

News

LATEST NEWS

David Dickins

• DF Dickins Associates is proud to be the newest member of Chevron Canada’s Arctic Center in Calgary.  This is an exciting new venture contracted through 2011,  with many opportunities to contribute to exploration and development planning throughout the Arctic region, focusing on offshore engineering and environmental issues
  
  
• A long-established Canadian company, DF Dickins became a US-registered LLC beginning in January 2009.  This organizational change reflects the company’s participation in global resource development projects from a California base.

SINTEF JOINT INDUSTRY PROJECT:
Oil Spill Contingency in Ice for Arctic Waters 2006-2009

This program is funded by a group of international oil companies and government agencies to advance the response capabilities available to deal with accidental oil spills in ice. The program is being run by SINTEF in Trondheim, Norway. DF Dickins Associates is a participating R&D organization charged with managing the remote sensing project within the overall program. 

NEW PROJECTS – 2009

A chapter on Arctic oil spill response is under preparation for inclusion in a new Ice Navigation Manual being developed for release later this year by Witherby Seamanship International in the UK.

Dickins is part of a team led by SL Ross Environmental Research to review the state of oil spill knowledge for the Beaufort Sea for the Environmental Studies Research Funds.  Dickins’ part in the project will focus on technologies for spill surveillance and tracking and long-term monitoring.

GPR DETECTION OF OIL IN ICE

Following a series of successful joint projects in this area over past five years, the Dickins/Boise State team is gearing up to develop a more powerful airborne radar to reliably detect oil trapped in and under ice from a low-flying helicopter.  The new project is scheduled for completion in mid-2010 and will be funded by a group of international oil companies.  See Projects – Oil Spills for a synopsis of work in this area and links to published reports.

RECENT PROJECT ACTIVITIES

The past year saw a record number of Arctic project completions covering a wide range of topic areas:

• Review of Methods to Deal with Accidental Spills in Ice focusing on four different regions, from Alaska to Russia
• Air cushion vehicle applications in the Alaskan Offshore and Alberta Oil Sands
• Arctic climate change affecting future oil and gas developments
• Oil-in-ice detection with ground penetrating radar
• Chukchi Sea Ice Conditions
• Northwest Passage Shipping Routes
• Ice conditions affecting the design of new icebreakers for the Chukchi and Beaufort Sea development areas
• Remote sensing of oil spills in broken ice

RECENT AND UPCOMING PUBLICATIONS

Bradford, J.H., Dickins, D.F. and P.J. Brandvik.  2009 (in review).  Assessing the potential to detect snow covered oil spills on sea ice using airborne ground-penetrating radar.  Submitted for publication in Geophysics.

LONG-TERM PROJECT COMPLETED

Mapping Sea Ice Overflood Using Remote Sensing from Smith Bay to Camden Bay
for the US Department of Interior, Minerals Management Service, Anchorage

Radarsat Image of the Kuparuk River Overflood on June 11, 2000.

Dickins Associates worked together with Coastal Frontiers, AeroMetric, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks to develop a geodatabase of sea ice overflood for the period 1995 to 2007, for all the major rivers discharging into the Alaskan Beaufort Sea.  The study used historical satellite imagery (both visible and radar) and historical, industry-sponsored helicopter surveys to map overflood boundaries into a GIS with supporting databases on environmental factors such as temperature and streamflow.  The study is now complete with the final report delivered in July 2009 following a very favorable review of the draft – a link for download will be issued shortly.  MMS will use this data to assess the risks of future oil gas development proposals in the nearshore zone.