The Coast Guard’s Navigation Center recently worked with the Coast Guard’s International Ice Patrol (IIP) to make available machine-readable format shapefiles on the NAVCEN’s website.

By providing these files to the public, anyone with Google Earth or ARCGIS can easily plot IIP’s ice flow products on a daily basis. Currently, the National Weather Service uses the files in their Arctic Environmental Response Management Application site (an online mapping tool that integrates both static and real-time data on ship locations, weather and ocean currents) which is frequently used by environmental responders and decision makers.

By making these files publicly available, ship routing companies can easily have the data on-hand, instead of finding and entering the coordinates by hand. This ease of information availability for industry could potentially have a significant impact on increased accuracy and timing for critical data.

Links:

NOAA’s Environmental Response Management Application

NAVCEN’s North American Ice Service Products

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