Modelling Risks to Offshore Facilities Associated with Ice Islands off Canada’s East Coast

Abstract

Two models are being developed to assist operators quantify risks to facilities off the east coast of Canada, given initial locations and characteristics of an ice island or set of ice island fragments. The first is an ensemble model in which a specified number of possible trajectories and fates will be simulated and plotted. Different realizations will be simulated by varying the environmental hindcast data and random parameters used. The second is a finite-element advection-diffusion model that determines maps of the probability of occurrence of an ice island fragment at different locations. This paper discusses the overall approach and progress to date.