A system for icebreaker navigation and assistance planning using spaceborne SAR information in the Baltic Sea

The two most heavily navigated waterways in the world, where seasonal sea ice plays an important role in navigation, are the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada and the Baltic Sea in Europe. Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has been used operationally by the icebreakers in the Baltic Sea since 1992. Today, both RADARSAT and Envisat advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) data are delivered to end-users. The captain and mates on Finnish and Swedish icebreakers interpret the images using a work station called IBPlott developed by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The geographical information system (GIS) type of work station combines and displays all available relevant information required for making routing and ship assistance decisions. The information available includes satellite images, ice charts, positions and destinations of the ships moving in the area, visualization of current speed and tracks (from the Automatic Identification System (AIS)), ice forecasts, water level, and weather forecasts and the most recent weather observations. In this paper we present the operational system in use for making SAR images available to the end-users in near real time in the Baltic Sea, combining the satellite images with other information products. The end-user experiences of the system and future development ideas are presented briefly.