An Investigation of Winter Navigation and Icebreaker Needs in the Ice-Infested Water: The Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga

With climate change, the ice cover in the Arctic and subArctic regions is likely to change relatively quickly. The Baltic Sea is a region with much maritime traffic and meanwhile some parts are covered by ice during wintertime. Icebreakers are usually needed in this region to assist the traffic in ice. However, icebreakers are a limited and expensive resource, and the number of vessels waiting for assistance often outnumbers the available icebreakers. Therefore, whether the current icebreaker strategy needs to change under the impact of the changing ice environment is important. This paper aims to establish a wintertime traffic simulation model with icebreaker assistance for an ice-infested area, i.e., the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga to see the possible trend. The model is developed with traffic data, ice data and icebreaker information, etc. With the model developed, investigations are conducted by varying different parameters to estimate their effect on the system. This way, the icebreaker needs under different future winter scenarios can be estimated with appropriate system behavior indicators calculated. The results show that the different winter scenarios have quite different icebreaker needs and system behaviors.