Beaufort Sea engineering database project

Status: Active

The NRC is working with partners to develop a shared database of relevant georeferenced information to increase the safety of ships and structures operating in the Beaufort Sea in Canada's North.

Objectives

• Provide ship operators, the oil and gas industry and others with ready access to the information needed to make informed decisions on ice load conditions, offshore and marine planning and engineering challenges in the Beaufort Sea
• Provide a way to store decades-worth of valuable Arctic data, which was at risk of being lost as there was no accessible place to collect and store it

Deliverables

• Develop and deploy a shared database that integrates relevant Arctic data from a variety of sources

Activities

• Collect and integrate relevant data such as:
  • public data from ice charts, weather stations and climate models
  • georeferenced information on ice hazards such as ridges, multi-year ice and ice islands
  • on-ice observations of ridged and multi-year ice
  • the NRC's catalogue of more than 300 events of ice loading on offshore, inland and coastal structures
  • 20 years of geotechnical data on subsea soil characteristics in the Beaufort Sea
  • ArcticNet's physical ice sampling, gathered by many students for different purposes, but never before compiled in a systematic manner

Collaborators

• Oil and gas companies
• Other Government of Canada departments

Project Team

Louis Poirier

Louis is the project manager for the Beaufort Sea Engineering Database. He is a researcher who specializes in measuring ice loads and has led a number of projects to measure ice loads on structures at both model and full scale.

Richard Burcher

Richard is a software specialist who focuses on providing GIS, data processing, visualizations and developer support for researchers.

Philippe Lamontagne

Philippe provides analytical and programming expertise at the National Research Council. His work focuses mainly on processing large volumes of data from various sources and transitioning numerical models from research to an operational level.

David Watson

David is a scientific software specialist involved in software development and numerical modelling. His focus is on the development of software for pre-processing and post-processing of numerical model data, data analysis and data visualization.