Review of Backtracking Methods for Marine Oil Spill Pollution

The frequent occurrence of offshore oil spills has a profound impact on the marine environment, regional economy and human health. As an effective means to determine the subject of marine pollution responsibility, the backtracking of marine oil spills is of great significance for timely blocking the source of oil spills, reducing the amount of oil spillage and solving marine pollution liability disputes. This paper mainly analyzes the various technical means of oil spill backtracking research at sea, summarizes the development status of oil spill backtracking by chemical and physical methods. Chemical method, also known as oil fingerprint identification method, mainly collects oil spill samples on site, tests and analyzes oil information, and compares them with potential oil species in the surrounding sea to infer the source of oil spill on the sea surface. The physical method mainly uses the historical marine environmental data to drive the numerical model of oil spill backtracking, and reverse deduce the spatio-temporal migration law of oil spill pollution. The paper concludes with a discussion of current challenges and future directions in the field of oil spill backtracking. Oil fingerprint analysis will lead to a decrease in the accuracy of traceability in the identification of multi-source pollution. The error of oil spill traceability numerical model will increase in complex ocean environment. The establishment of "AI + numerical model" hybrid backtracking system, the development of multi-source monitoring technology, and the promotion of global oil fingerprint database sharing have broad development prospects.