ABSTRACT
Increasing maritime traffic, combined with the possible warming of the climate, will affect the demand for icebreaker (IB) assistance in the Baltic Sea. Accurate prediction of the local demand for IB assistance without an appropriate simulation tool is hard because of the number of variables that must be considered. The winter navigation system is fairly complex as the people in charge of the system must consider e.g. the present weather and ice conditions, the capabilities of the merchant ships needing assistance and the number and location of the ships visiting the sea area under consideration. Typically planning of the IB movements is done by the IB captains operating on the studied sea area. This paper describes a simulation tool built around a deterministic, ice-breaker movement based computer model, which simulates the operations of the icebreakers and merchant ships navigating on the varying ice conditions of the studied sea area. Simulation test results, obtained by using real-life historical input-data, indicates that the model is fairly accurate in simulating the winter traffic system of the northern Baltic Sea. The simulation model is applied to study the possible effect of the future EEDI regulations on the ship waiting time and IB demand.
