RESTORE Sponsored Research Project: Protecting Texas coastlines from potential oil spills in Galveston Bay using drone surveys and maps of a new response effectiveness index

Galveston Bay and the surrounding Texas coast are vulnerable to marine oil spills, from both the high volume of marine commerce through the Galveston Bay ship channel and from offshore oil exploration. The project team will use drone observations and NOAA forecasts to develop technology that seeks to improve manager response decisions to future oil spills in a RESTORE Science funded project from 2023 to 2028. This dataset includes UAS drone survey video and still imagery data of the ocean surface with corresponding measurements of near-surface ocean currents. Additionally, the following associated data are included: UTM coordinates, Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) measurements of ocean currents within the water column, CTD measurements of temperature and salinity across the water column. The data was collected at Galveston Bay (entrance channel and across the Houston ship channel inside the bay) and Freeport, Texas. This dataset will be collected over 3 initial field-testing periods followed by quarterly surveys and oil spill event-based response surveys. The UAS surveys are stored as .MOV video files and still images (JPG), and the accompanying txt files containing the processed near-surface ocean currents data. Please note that still image files will not be available for every survey. The ADCP measurements are stored as txt files, for each of the east(u), north(v) and vertical(w) components of velocity, along with the magnitude and direction. The temperature and salinity profiles are stored as CSV files. GPS data of the boat location from which some UAS surveys are conducted is stored as csv files. This dataset is a result of research funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's RESTORE Science Program (ROR - https://ror.org/0042xzm63) under award NA23NOS4510309 to Texas A&M University.

[
  "https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inportserve/waf/noaa/nos/nccos/dmp/pdf/73334.pdf"
]