Within the EC funded LIFE project VERMEER the new software system VERMEER Dispersants has been developed, which allows to simulate the distribution of oil components within an aquatic ecosystem under different environmental conditions. It specially allows to focus on the comparison of the distribution of component with or without the addition of chemical surfactants that support dispersion of the oil.

The software, freely available, has been designed to support decisions with regard to dispersant use as mitigation measure after marine oil spills.

VERMEER Dispersants allows predicting the evolution of concentration of oil components in different environmental compartments of marine ecosystems over time. Additionally, predictions for a series of toxicological endpoints can be derived for organisms of interest from the modeled concentrations. The user is asked to provide information regarding the volume and chemical composition of the spilled oil, the impacted zone, and other important parameters such as the temperature and the expected efficacy of dispersant addition in order to launch the simulation.

The software allows to run both deterministic and probabilistic simulations.