Review of Ice Charting and Ship Routing Methods. Ice Routes (Deliverable 2)

The objective of this study is to review current ice charting and ship routing methods in the Northern Sea Route, as a background for development of new and advanced computer-based charting and routing techniques, which can utilise the large amount of ice information available from new wide-swath SAR images from satellites such as RADARSAT and ENVISAT

Despite the relatively small swath width of 100 km, the ERS SAR satellite is useful for ice mapping of limited areas such as straits, shores, river estuaries, and other difficult ice navigation areas. Operational experience shows that processed satellite images, with superimposed shorelines and geographical co-ordinates, are useful in many tactical ice navigation situations.
As more satellite SAR systems become available, the volume of data for use in ice mapping is expected to grow significantly. Use of RADARSAT ScanSAR images, covering 500 km wide swaths, represents an enormous increase in data volume, which requires more automated processing chain for the ice chart production. The wealth of ice information available from SAR images can only be fully utilised with the help of adequate computer tools which the ice interpreters can use in the production of ice charts, and for transmission of data to the offshore users