Expert opinions, INVESTMENT CLIMATE

Project of risk and control management center in the Arctic underway

Dmitry Purim, CEO of Sovfrakht, Member of Coordinating Council of Delovaya Rossiya (Business Russia)

I consider the project of the Northern Arctic Situation Center as one of the most important and promising ones for the modern Arctic. In 2017, the shipping company Sovfrakht came up with the initiative of establishing the non-commercial organization Arctic Situation Center in Arkhangelsk, with assistance from the Association of Polar Explorers interregional public organization.

The Northern Arctic Situation Center is an advanced multipurpose platform to organize sea shipping in the Arctic. Its project implies creating online and offline platform. The center’s offline resources will include an advanced hall at the Lomonosov Northern (Arctic) Federal University, equipped with all means of communication, while the center website will become its informational basis and will allow as to monitor online the current situation on itinerary of cargo movements, request services, post information, solve specific calculation tasks, and others. The center platform will allow modeling situations using the data analysis from Russian and foreign competent sources – the data on ice and navigation situations, satellite images, actual information on weather conditions, existing restrictions, and recommendations from specialists. This information will allow us to observe the icebreaker and vessel placements, forecast the ice situation, calculate expenses for a vessel’s specific route, and so on. The system will offer the most preferable route as regards the correlation between risks and expenses.

The center’s website will be a multifunctional service used by cargo owners, vessel operators, chartering agents, ship owners, logistic infrastructure operators, financial organizations, insurance companies, rescue and emergency services, and many others. In case a company wants to receive a permission to navigate in the Northern Sea Route area, it can request the service either on the center’s administration website or via the center website by sending an application from the personal account. Or, in case it is necessary to calculate the cargo shipping cost, it will be possible, via a user’s account, to specify the dispatch and destination points, shipment dates and the cargo data, and to instantly receive information on the services cost and port fees, and to post the request. The website will be available for all registered users.

The Northern Arctic Situation Center will implement three key functions. It will act as a single ‘one-stop service’ to organize cargo shipping in the Arctic, an accelerator of business services in the region, and a portal for integration of information resources, including state services. The center’s launch is planned for 2019. I expect the center to provide availability and promptness of information and opportunities for users to monetize on information products, and to increase the information and services quality. As a result, we will receive a tool for centralized managing risks and safety in the Arctic, which will become a driver of developing the Arctic logistics.

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