Improving safety for shipping in the Polar Seas (POLARIS)

past and future

The Arctic Shipping service has completed an historical analysis of risk for ships operating in the global Arctic from 2015-2022. This included just over 2000 unique vessels operating in the region, of which 1,400 operated in ice infested waters. While the results should not be viewed as an evaluation of compliance or non-compliance due to the scientific limitations involved in the approach, the analysis is a good proxy for the relative levels of ‘risk’ emerging among operational vessels in the Arctic over this time period. The results of this analysis will be published in the coming months, but an initial summary and maps are available in the story map about the Arctic Shipping service.

The Polar View Arctic portal which will be used in the future for access to POLARIS forecast products.

The POLARIS risk forecasting services delivered by the Danish and Finnish meteorological institutes (DMI and FMI) are now operational and being evaluated. We have conducted live service demonstrations onboard two vessels to test the service and gather feedback from ship crews, with further demonstrations planned in the coming months. Further information about the forecasts and demonstrations available in the story map about the service (link above).