Operational Evaluation of a Knowledge-Based Sea Ice Classification System

ARKTOS (Advanced Reasoning Using Knowledge for Typing of Sea Ice) is a fully automated intelligent sea ice classification system. ARKTOS is in use at the U.S. National Ice Center (NIC) for daily operations related to the NIC’S task of mapping the ice covered oceans. ARKTOS incorporates image processing, input from ancillary data, and artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze and classify RADARSAT Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery. The NIC and Naval Research Laboratory (NRL/ERIM) have been testing and evaluating ARKTOS through the freezeup, winter, melt-out and summer seasons of the Beaufort Sea. In this paper we outline the development and evolution of ARKTOS, evaluate current output, and discuss future implementation.