Home

Research

Interests

Miscellaneous

Where's Nick?

Home > Research > IRIS

Ice Ridging Information for Decision Making in Shipping Operations

I was employed by SAMS on this project between 2003 and 2005. IRIS was a project of the EC 5th Framework "Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development Programme". The main aim of the project is to improve sea ice monitoring and forecasting in the Baltic Sea.

To do this the various project partners are engaged in work to improve sea ice classification from satellite images and to determine how sea ice ridges affect the transit times of ships. My work is primarily to see how ridging parameters (location, thickness and width) can be determined from SAR (Sythetic Aperture Radar) satellite data. I am also involved in fieldwork to measure sea ice thickness through the use of drill holes and EM thickness devices.

In 2004 myself and colleagues conducted work off the island of Hailuoto in the Bay of Bothnia. Some photographs of us at work can found on the following pages.

You can also visit the official project web pages at the Helsinki University of Technology.