Digitalization of Arctic shipping along the Northern Sea Route

Abstract

The proportion of scientific papers devoted to studying and scientifically substantiating climate change and ice melting in northern latitudes has been steadily increasing in recent years. Of particular interest to our country are researches studying climate change in the Arctic and the consequences of these changes. One of the effects of climate change is the retreat of Arctic ice to the North. Thereby, it becomes possible to more effectively use the Northern Sea Route. The Northern Sea Route is very promising both economically and strategically. Therefore, its development and active use is an important task for the state. However, there are a large variety of obstacles and problems related to the effective development of the Northern Sea Route. One of the most important is the underdevelopment of transport and logistics infrastructure, as well as insufficient digitalization of the basic services required for safe navigation in the difficult conditions of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation. In this context, the digitalization of Arctic shipping along the Northern Sea Route is an urgent task. The aim of the study is to develop approaches, methods and tools to ensure the digital transformation of Arctic shipping. Such infrastructure elements as Arctic ports, as well as services for ice and pilotage of vessels are considered separately. As the main research methods, we selected system analysis, conceptual modeling, ontological modeling and engineering. Two ontologies are presented as scientific and practical results obtained in the work: the ontology of the Arctic seaports of Russia and the ontology of shipping support in the waters of the Northern Sea Route. The paper also considers several promising directions for the development of the results obtained. One of these directions is related to the digitization of the most important components of the transport and logistics system for shipping along the northern coasts of the Russian Federation. This will provide better access to maritime transport infrastructure along the Arctic routes through the use of a single digital platform. We believe that the development of knowledge-based decision-making systems and machine learning approaches for maritime logistics management in the Arctic is a promising area for further research.