The Arctic is estimated to hold as much as 30% of the Worlds unused resources including oil, gas and minerals. The ice in the Arctic is reducing faster than ever predicted due to climate change making year round Trans-Arctic shipping a near possibility. Predictions are that shipping through the Arctic will increase fast; first periodically and that by 2030 could be as much as all container traffic in the World today. At the same time, destinational shipping is increasing fast, servicing developments and communities, as well as fishing vessels and not least tourism shipping. Interest and awareness about the Arctic and its Global importance, economically and environmentally, is rising fast in a Global context. The Arctic is a region of opportunities and threats.
Concerns related to environmental impact of human activities as well as search and rescue and response preparedness capacities are a growing issue. To be able to utilize the opportunities and minimize the threats, it is essential to have access to reliable and current information and data and the expertise and tools to process those into relevant stakeholder knowledge.
Rapid climate changes, environmental concerns and economic globalisation together call for reliable data solutions for sustainable and society supportive business operations in the Arctic region and are the basis for the Arctic Data Management System (ADMS). The primary users of the ADMS services are defined as parties that make strategic plans and/or decisions concerning the development in the Arctic or decide on investments, critically important for Arctic and Global societies.
Furthermore, the market analysis indicated there is a growing interest from stakeholder companies in the sectors of mining, oil and gas, media, as well as shipping industry, inline with growing sociatal concern and awareness. Presently, services as specialized as ADMS exist only at an initial stage, hence targeted market research outlining current situation and forecast are not available.
The overall objective of the project is to design a proof of concept of an Arctic Data Management System. This is the first phase necessary for the implementation of the ADMS, which is a system of interpreting and managing Arctic-related data and knowledge. ADMS identifies and retrieves Arctic-related information from multiple databases, adapts it to a common standard and provides interpretation, visualization and retrieval of the standardized data to the end-user. ADMS is based on state-of-the-art data intelligence tools including geographic information systems, meta data catalogues, and interpretation and visualization tools. In the interpretation of data, the system combines the highest level of technical and human elements to provide end-users with the highest quality and most appropriate data solutions. The proof of concept is a realization of a method to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed data management system and to verify that customers will use the system.
The company’s strategic objective is to become the main data solutions provider and knowledge consultant on the Northern regions in the global context. Improving the existing data management system and providing services of interpreting and managing Arctic-related data and knowledge based on a state-of-the-art system of retrieval, analyzing and visualizing of data from multiple databases, as well as further-adapting the system to a common standard and providing interpretation to the end-user constitutes the key point of company’s innovation strategy.
