The Role of RADARSAT-2 SAR Data for Ice Seismic Operations Available to Purchase

In conducting ice-seismic, geophysical ships and icebreakers routinely operate in rigorous ice regimes. As the progress of the geophysical ship must be continuous and without error, operations must be supported with high levels of ice information. Ice-seismic follows a predetermined route where one of the key requirements is to assess and execute a plan to adhere to pre-determined survey parameters. To meet operational requirements for ice-seismic, there are three key elements: ice information, data delivery, and data management. Products have been developed that provide ice information such as ice-water delineation and ice strain. To deal with data delivery bandwidth-constraints data compression was required. For ease of implementation and multi-platform compatibility, a commercial off-the-shelf compression technique was selected and integrated into an automated production chain. A data management system was developed for management of the georeferenced data onboard the ships and the translation of the data into sound operational decisions.