Clear Seas Centre for Responsible Marine Shipping Society (Clear Seas) requires consulting services to conduct an assessment of projected vessel traffic levels in Canadian waters, beginning with the Pacific region. The Great Lakes, St. Lawrence, Atlantic and Arctic regions would also benefit from vessel traffic forecasting assessments, and are expected to be the subject of future studies. Clear Seas has identified the impact of changing vessel traffic conditions and the associated maritime services needed to maintain a safe maritime environment as a key issue affecting marine shipping in Canada.
Within Canada’s Pacific region, multiple resource and terminal expansion projects with a marine shipping component are currently under review by the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC), and/or the Province of British Columbia or have been approved. The changes in shipping traffic following approval of multiple projects could have a significant impact on the maritime shipping landscape over the next 10-40 years. The goal of this work is to provide information about the potential increases to support maritime sector participants in adapting to a rapidly evolving marine landscape.
This project is to determine vessel traffic projections as a result of major resource and terminal expansion projects in Canada’s Pacific region with a marine shipping component across a range of timeframes (2030, 2040, 2050, 2060). While the assessment to be completed through this Vessel Traffic Forecasting project is limited to projects in B.C. and vessel traffic in the Pacific region, the objectives include developing an assessment methodology that could be applied to potential future work (to be conducted independent to this contract), including scenarios based on likelihood of project occurrence, projects entering the decommissioning phase, and applications in other Canadian maritime regions (Atlantic, Arctic, and Great Lakes / St. Lawrence regions).
