SmartICE

Avoiding thin ice

It’s generally accepted that the greatest challenge facing the Arctic region is global warming. But what does that look like on a community level? For the people who call northern Canada home, the challenges include danger due to melting ice as they move about their daily lives. However, one innovative Atlantic Canadian non-profit, SmartICE Sea Ice Monitoring & Information Inc., is addressing the challenge head-on. And it’s doing so while empowering the Indigenous communities it serves.

“Vital to life in the North, ice connects communities and essentially serves as a highway for people to travel the land and hunt for food,” Carolann Harding, CEO for SmartICE, says. “There is a growing fear of traveling on ice with less predictable and more dangerous ice conditions. These conditions are impacting Indigenous livelihoods and health.”

Founded in 2017 in St. John’s and Nain, Newfoundland and Labrador, SmartICE has developed two remote environmental monitoring systems to determine the thickness of ice: the SmartBUOY and the SmartQAMUTIK. 

The SmartBUOY is a stationary sensor that, when inserted into the ice, measures data such as the temperature of the air, snow, ice and water. The SmartQAMUTIK is mobile. This sensor is pulled behind a snowmobile like a sled and measures ice and snow levels.

Once collected, the nearly real-time data is combined with local community observations such as the location of cracks or seal holes in the ice, and Indigenous and traditional knowledge passed down through generations on how to identify and test ice conditions. Combined, this information is used to create ice travel hazard maps which are posted online, as well as on the mobile app, SIKU, and shared via social and broadcast media with more than 35 Indigenous communities across Canada in which SmartICE operates.  

“Our information contributes to more informed decisions to support ice travel and community economic development such as outfitting and fisheries,” Harding explains. “By augmenting Indigenous and local knowledge and supporting traditional ice use, SmartICE also supports local culture, intergenerational learning, and community wellbeing.”

As a social enterprise, SmartICE embodies a business model in which the goal is increasing economic opportunities and social development while preserving and respecting local cultures. SmartICE has won multiple awards in recognition of its technology in service to Canada’s Arctic communities such as the United Nations Momentum for Climate Change Solutions Award in 2017, the Governor General’s Award in 2019, and the Frederik Paulsen Arctic Academic Action Award in 2021 for “an action-oriented scientific initiative that can reverse the dramatic effects of climate change in a concrete way”. Harding, herself, was a Social Change Award Finalist for National Impact as part of the 2021 RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards.

“The choice of a social enterprise business model is consistent with Inuit societal values, such as caring for the environment and community, and being innovative and resourceful,” Harding says. “It also commits to maximizing social impact and improving training and employment prospects for youth.”

One way SmartICE has made an impact with Indigenous youth is with the creation of the SmartICE Employment Readiness and Technology Development Program in Nain, Nunatsiavut. Established in 2019, the program provides Inuit youth with the skills to construct SmartICE’s high-tech monitoring devices. SmartICE then hires graduates of the youth-led program to work at its production facility. This program helps reduce barriers to education and employment experienced by Inuit youth. 

“The up-skilling support provided by SmartICE increases employability,” Harding adds. “Inuit who are trained to operate our on-ice technology acquire technical skills that are broadly transferable. Hiring Inuit operators is critical to ensuring that community members have confidence in SmartICE data, knowing that it was produced by combining Indigenous and local knowledge, local observations, and technology that is made in Inuit Nunangat.”

SmartICE is committed to Indigenous collaboration in its workplace as well. To increase diversity and inclusion, SmartICE restructured its Board to include 50% Indigenous, 40% female and 50% northern representation. As a social enterprise, success for SmartICE is not measured by profit, but by what success means for the people and communities it works with - something Harding is proud of as its leader.

“It’s important that SmartICE supports the needs of the communities,” Harding says. “They are the ones who tell us what they need through Community Management Committees, community councils or consultations with elders, hunters and trappers to name a few. Any profit generated through the social enterprise goes towards creating social impacts with the aim of enabling community and people themselves.  That’s the goal of a social enterprise.” 

And for the people of Canada’s North, success is also measured each day that technology is combined with Indigenous and local ways of knowing to enable community members to safely navigate the highways of ice.