Using Position Beacons to Measure Ice Movement for Beaufort and Chukchi Offshore Petroleum Activities

Understanding how ice moves and tracking hazardous ice features is critical to set design criteria, plan operations and manage facilities for offshore petroleum activities in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, or indeed any ice infested region of the world. This paper explains: 1) how GPS satellite position beacons can be used to gather information on the different types of ice situations encountered; 2) different types of instruments available for each application and their relative merits; 3) future technological developments for this instrumentation.