The Breakdown of Arctic Development (BAD) Atlas

The Breakdown of Arctic Development (or BAD) Atlas is a webtool designed to inform policy makers of the encroachment of human activity within the precious Arctic environment as it becomes accessible due to climate change. For this project we wanted to combine automated detection algorithms with a user-friendly design to give a real time picture of unsustainable development occurring in the Arctic. Our prototype focuses on oil, with a classification algorithm for oil spills, and a detection algorithm for finding offshore platforms. Using similar techniques the BAD Atlas would eventually show a range of activity including mining and fishing.

This satellite imagery shows the 2020 Norilisk Oil spill in the Arctic Circle in Russia. The oil spill occurred when a fuel reservoir built on permafrost collapsed and 20,000 Tons of diesel leaked into the nearby river. The first panel shows a before and after image of the spill. You can see the rusty red coloration of the river where the diesel has been spilled. In the second panel we show the area classified by the algorithm.

We wanted to provide an up to date database of offshore platforms within the arctic circle. As a proof of concept we made a detection algorithm using synthetic aperture radar imagery. Our detections can be compared against known locations of oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea. In the final BAD Atlas, our algorithm could be used to keep an up-to-date map of all the offshore platforms in the Arctic. Used with the oil spill classification algorithm we could monitor the platforms for spills in real time.