Ice Information for the Maritime Community
The 16th annual meeting of the International Ice Charting Working Group (IICWG) took place in Rostock and Neustrelitz from 19 to 23 October 2015. It was hosted by the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) in collaboration with the DLR and the Alfred Wegener Institute. The theme of this year's event was "Relevant Ice Information for the Maritime Community".
Almost 70 participants from Canada, Denmark, Australia, the USA, the UK, Chile, Sweden, Russia, Italy, Norway, Japan, Finland, Poland, Argentina and Germany took part in the meeting.
On 20 October, the participants travelled from Rostock to Neustrelitz to attend two workshops at the DLR. A large number of specialist presentations and posters were devoted to the topics of ice modelling and forecasting, ice mapping based on satellite-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data, iceberg monitoring and modelling and the evaluation of ice information from a user perspective. For IICWG members who were unable to attend in person, the presentations were broadcast via the Internet. There was also the opportunity to participate in the discussion with questions.
After the workshops, the participants were given a guided tour of the DLR site in Neustrelitz, where they learnt lots of interesting facts. The DLR Maritime Safety and Security Research Centre there is working together with the research centre in Bremen to classify sea ice and map icebergs in near-real time on the basis of SAR data. Satellite data suitable for this purpose (TerraSAR-X, Sentinel-1, Radarsat-2) can already be received directly from the ground station in Neustrelitz.