Support to Business Planning and Development

The future business development perspectives for three important components of the Arctic Blue Economy: (1) maritime transport via the Arctic Ocean, (2) cruise industry in the Svalbard area and (3) fishery in the Barents Sea have been analysed. The maritime transport and cruise industry will potentially increase substantially over the coming years due to retreat of Arctic sea ice although the Covid-19 pandemic most likely will have severe negative impact on the cruise industry in the immediate future. Barents Sea fishery will have to address changes in the pursuit of their profession due to climate and human introduced changes in the stock composition and distribution.
Entering into operations in the harsh Arctic environment requires good knowledge and understanding of the physical environmental conditions to ensure a sound decision process on economy, efficiency, safety of ship, crew and cargo and protection of the vulnerable Arctic environment. Therefore, examples of basic statistical analysis of relevant parameters like sea ice, wind, waves, temperature and salinity has been performed to outline the trends in change of environmental condition of importance for maritime operations in the Arctic. Additionally, operational meteorological and oceanographic near real time products and services are important when actually operating in the area.
Satellite observations and outputs from numerical models are essential data sources for generation of operational products and services; but the trustworthiness of the information’s from these two data sources depends critically on the availability of in situ observations of key variables for assimilation in the models and especially for validation of quality of the generated data products. Unfortunately, the availability of enough relevant and high-quality in situ observations of oceanographic and meteorological variables from the Arctic Region is far from satisfactory for this purpose.
It is therefore crucial to design and implement a fit-for-purpose Arctic Observing System to ensure the availability of high-quality in situ data needed for model assimilation as well as validation of the quality of model and remote sensing products used both for statistical trend analysis and particularly operational purposes.
In the perspective of increased maritime activity in the environmentally vulnerable Arctic Region it would be advisable to perform monitoring and analysis of environmental pressures similar to the one performed by European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) and European Environmental Agency (EEA) for the European Seas (EMSA & EEA,2021).