Combining Indigenous knowledge and AI to support safer on-ice travel

Waterloo Engineering researchers partner with the Inuit-led Arctic Eider Society to better detect hazardous ice areas  

By Val Maloney

Faculty of Engineering

Warming temperatures mean shorter ice seasons in Sanikiluaq, Nunavut. As a result, the stretches of landfast ice formed from frozen seawater that Inuit use to travel and hunt on are increasingly unpredictable and unsafe.  

Polynyas, areas of open water and thin ice, occur where ocean currents or wind prevent pack ice from forming. They’re typically found in the same locations each year enabling travellers to plan their routes safely. But climate change is affecting this predictability, causing smaller, unexpected polynyas that make travelling across the pack ice risky.  

To address this issue, the Sanikiluaq-based Arctic Eider Society (AES), a charity organization that facilitates indigenous-driven solutions for communities across Hudson Bay and Inuit Nunangat — the homeland for Inuit in Canada, has partnered with the University of Waterloo’s Vision and Imaging Processing (VIP) Lab to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and make on-ice travel safer with accurate and timely data on polynyas easily available.  

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