Willingly or forced by circumstances, cities across Europe have slowly started to change their vision about urban mobility.

When a ship runs aground, or two vessels crash into each other, the damaged one may lose its stability, or worse, sink. But imagine if after a ship accident, balloons popped up like car airbags to keep the disabled vessel upright and afloat .

Hans Cozijn is Senior Project Manager at MARIN, the Maritime Research Institute in the Netherlands, which specialises in testing designs of ships and oil platforms.

Oil is less dense than water and therefore the oil escaping the sea bed travels up to the water surface. Dr. Fivos Andritsos and his colleagues from the Joint Research Center in Ispra, Italy have now developed a reservoir which can be applied on top of the leakage.