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MAROFF-2-Maritim virksomhet og offsh-2

Multidisciplinary approach for spray icing modelling and decision support in the Norwegian maritime sector

Alternative title: Multidisiplinær tilnærming for sjøsprøytisingmodellering og bestemmelsesstøtte innenfor den norske maritime sektoren

Awarded: NOK 13.0 mill.

Sea spray icing is a major issue for marine operations in the Arctic offshore and cold waters in northern areas. Understanding this phenomenon is important in such regions as it imposes safety hazards and operational risks for a wide range of marine activities such as fishery, fish farms, shipping, offshore wind farms, oil spill clean-up, etc. This project focuses both on spray icing modelling and simulation as well as risk-informed decision-making and decision analysis for scenarios associated with spray icing risks. This multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary research 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. To this aim, at the first step this project is built on modifying and refining existing spray icing models for prediction of spray-icing occurrence, its rate, and severity, and thus to develop a probabilistic framework for long-term forecasting of spray icing climatology. Tabletop exercises will also be conducted to simulate various spray icing scenarios, during which participants are able to use different spray icing-related information to make informed decisions. We will collect measurements of spray amounts, meteorological and atmospheric parameters, in order to see whether it is possible to make empirical expressions for spray fluxes based on these measurements. We will also develop an interactive platform for crowd-sourcing field observations and communicating spray icing risk assessments. This project is funded by the Research Council of Norway via MAROFF programme from 2021 to 2025, and is run jointly by UiT The Arctic University of Norway (the project owner), SINTEF Nord AS, Norwegian Meteorological Institute, The Norwegian Coastal Administration, and Hermes AS.

Sea spray icing is a unique issue to marine operations in the Arctic offshore water and in cold water. Understanding this phenomenon is important in such regions as it imposes limitations and contributes to increased risk in a wide range of marine sectors including, fishing, fish farms, offshore wind farms, tourism, oil and gas, and shipping. Beyond operational risks, spray icing poses safety hazards for the crew and the vessel stability. By developing models and simulation frameworks for prediction of spray-icing evens, this project helps decision-makers in technology and social science-related fields in the Norwegian maritime sector 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. The information and products developed in this project will help to also support the design and operation of anti-/de-icing measures as well as potentially reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions from such measures. Moreover, we will develop a platform as part of this project to share data and information with a variety of end users about icing events. Importantly, we will collect and integrate end user feedback to co-produce this platform. This end user feedback will also ultimately improve the spray icing models and decision support models developed in this project. A feedback loop with end users is established over the course of the project via three separate workshops where end user, marine industry, and research community representatives will discuss various elements of our developed models and frameworks. This process of knowledge creation, knowledge exchange, and building competence concerning spray icing in the Arctic will consequently help to create an information landscape that supports holistic and informed decision-making in spray icing emergency contexts.

Funding scheme:

MAROFF-2-Maritim virksomhet og offsh-2