Commercialising a system to improve maritime safety with artificially intelligent iceberg and sea ice detection

通过减少北极圈的冰量，气候变化创造了更多的航运路线。然而，由于冰山和第一年海冰的盛行，这些航线存在风险。尽管船上安装了现代雷达技术(B.Hill，海洋技术研究所)，但北半球每年仍有大约2-3起冰山船事故。最近发生的几起事件涉及旅游邮轮不得不弃船，例如MS Explorer沉没(2007年)和MS Fram(2007年)，或渔船严重损坏(例如斯巴达，2011年)。通过旅行数百英里来避开冰山也可能代价高昂，因此有一张最新的冰山位置地图是很重要的。此外，雷达探测到冰山的错误警报也是一个问题，实际上冰山是没有/未启用应答器的船只。因此，我们有动力提供额外的安全措施，在卫星图像上追踪冰山。这笔赠款的愿景是进一步开发和应用我们的系统，该系统使用人工智能和卫星成像相结合的方式，在任何云层条件下探测和跟踪运输路线上的冰山和海冰。最终目标是通过将其转化为商业产品来提高海上安全。

By lowering the quantity of ice in the Arctic Circle, climate change is creating additional shipping routes. However, these routes present risk due to the prevalence of icebergs and first-year sea ice.There are approximately 2-3 iceberg-ship incidents a year in the Northern Hemisphere, despite the modern radar technology onboard ships (B. Hill, Institute for Ocean Technology). Several relatively recent incidents have involved tourist cruises having to abandon ship e.g. MS Explorer which sank (2007), and MS Fram (2007), or severe damage to fishing vessels (e.g. Sparta, 2011). Avoiding icebergs by travelling hundreds of miles is also potentially costly and so it is important to have an up-to-date map of their locations. In addition to this, false alarms of icebergs detected on radar, which are actually ships with no/inactive transponders are also a problem. We are therefore motivated to provide an additional safety measure by tracking icebergs on satellite imaging.The vision of this grant is to further develop and apply our system which uses artificial intelligence combined with satellite imaging to detect and track icebergs and sea ice in shipping routes, in any cloud condition. The ultimate goal is to improve maritime safety by turning this into a commercial product.