On March 20, 2006, the members of the NaDiNe expert group working on the topic of oil spills gathered at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven for their first meeting. Participants were scientists from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), and the GKSS Research Center Geesthacht.

In collaboration with representatives of the NaDiNe project team, the experts of the Helmholtz Association's reseach centers developed approaches and procedures to allow the provision of information for the scientific support of oil spill cleanup efforts. The central topic of the discussion was how to benefit from the expertise of the group members and their scientific colleagues and how to use it in order to provide information and data products. Furthermore, the first version of a task schedule for the response to future, catastrophic oil spills was developed.

After the foundation of the experts teams covering the domains of floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis, the oil spill experts form the fourth group of scientistst within the NaDiNe project. The first meeting of another expert team, working on the subject of storms and storm surges is scheduled for April 2006.