Spray icing modelling and decision support in the Norwegian Arctic regions

Sea spray icing is a major risk and environmental challenge in a wide range of maritime sectors in Arctic waters, particularly in remote areas with less-developed infrastructure and rough weather conditions. Although winterisation measures are utilised to reduce spray icing risks, their sustainable design and operation relies on accurate predictions of spray icing rates. However, these predictions are associated with large uncertainties, in addition to challenges related to estimating the amount of spray flux and accurately modelling the spray icing process. In addition, there is limited research on spray icing climatology in Arctic waters. Furthermore, the important issue of spray icing prediction and simulation near the sea ice edge is not explored in the literature. Due to rapid sea ice retreat over the past few decades, statistics-based information on spray icing no longer applies to areas near the sea ice edge, which increases modelling uncertainty. Research on addressing organisational barriers and improving regulatory frameworks to avoid spray icing events are even more scant and limited. Available standards and codes (e.g., IMO’s polar code, DNV-GL’s winterisation standard, and NORSOK N-003 standard) are predominantly focused on developing requirements for suitable construction of winterized platforms. They do not provide decision framework for making real-time or short-term risk-informed decisions and thus do not adequately meet the considerations of various safety, security, and environmental factors in different types of maritime activities in the Arctic. In this session, we discuss the importance and relevance of developing models and simulation frameworks for predicting spray icing rates and severity. SPRICE, an ongoing multi-institutional project between the UiT - The Arctic University of Norway, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, and SINTEF Nord AS, funded by the Research Council of Norway, works on developing such models and simulation frameworks. The project consortium also seeks to help decision-makers in technology and social science-related fields in the Norwegian maritime sector to be equipped with better tools that support spray icing-related decision-making, risk perception, and operational safety, particularly due to operator error and interaction failure. We highlight the importance of conducting decision analyses for spray-icing-concerned risks applicable across various maritime sectors and as well as best practices for developing interactive platforms to crowdsource field observations and communicate spray icing risk assessments with a variety of end users. This multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary project offers a novel approach to furthering the current knowledge regarding spray icing, helping to develop a holistic perspective to understanding and meeting spray icing-concerned stakeholder needs.