Inuit Expertise and EO (Earth Observation) data for safe travel on landfast sea ice and climate monitoring

This project links Indigenous innovation across the Canadian Arctic with EO data to provide products that improve sea ice safety and climate change monitoring at scale for the North. The project builds on the success of SIKU: The Indigenous Knowledge Social Network, an online platform and mobile app, winner of the Google.org Impact Challenge in Canada, with over 18,000 users and 50,000 posts from communities across the Canadian and International North. SIKU delivers key tools and services including EO data, weather, and tides, and allows Inuit and Indigenous users to use and tag their own sea ice terms (classifications) when documenting dangerous sea ice conditions using the mobile app offline. This project brings together Inuit, government and academic experts across Canada to create a version 2 of our SIKU Ice Map. Currently, the SIKU Ice Map combines Inuit observations of hazards and ground-truth data and photos with the ice service charts, ice roughness derived from Sentinel 1 radar and SmartICE data. Version 2.0 will add RADARSAT Constellation Mission imagery as well as custom machine learning-derived products developed alongside drone and ground observations made by Inuit community members using SIKU to track persistent hazards like open water polynyas in landfast ice where people use the ice as their highways. The project sets the groundwork for an Indigenous-trained ML algorithm to deliver EO-derived products at scale for the benefit of northern sea ice travel safety and climate change research, including classification of EO observations into both Inuktitut sea ice terminologies and Western scientific frameworks.