SMARTICE - Sea Ice Monitoring and Information Inc.

Published purpose

By combining Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ), satellite data and state-of-theart unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs, or drones), the team will coproduce new information on sea ice and snow roughness and slush for the operational SmartICE Ice Travel Safety Maps. The production of these maps may be piloted in partner Nunavut communities of Arctic Bay, Gjoa Haven, Pond Inlet, Qikiqtarjuaq, and a Nunavik community, and eventually be expanded to all SmartICE communities (>24) in Inuit Nunangat. The approach will be grounded in IQ, and include a co-designed Inuit training program for UAV-based sea ice monitoring to augment the mature environmental data collection developed by SmartICE. The team will adapt UAVs and sensors to collect high-resolution topographic and electromagnetic data for local travel safety maps, as well as ground-truth a series of novel satellite products of sea-ice thickness and roughness, based on optical and micro-wave frequencies. With the Arctic Eider Society partner, a growing network of Inuit Nunangat communities will be able to access in near real-time these new satellite and in-situ data products and SmartICE Ice Travel Safety Maps through the Indigenous Knowledge Social Network platform (SIKU). At the request of the SmartICE Community Management Committees, the local travel safety maps will also be distributed in paper format within communities.