%0 Journal Article
%A Mohamed, Abdella
%A Hu, Xiangyu
%T Bathymetry- and Sea-Ice-Constrained Feasibility Screening for Trans-Arctic Navigation
%J TransNav, the International Journal on Marine Navigation and Safety of Sea Transportation
%V 20
%N 3
%P 539-545
%D 2026
%U ./Article_Bathymetry-_and_Sea-Ice-Constrained_Mohamed,79,1682.html
%X Arctic route planning requires an initial assessment of whether candidate corridors are physically navigable before detailed voyage optimisation, vessel-performance modelling, or operational risk assessment is attempted. This paper presents a reproducible feasibility-screening workflow for trans-Arctic navigation under bathymetry and sea-ice concentration constraints. A regular pan-Arctic routing grid is constructed over 40–85â—SN and 20â—SW–180â—SE for a Rotterdam–Yokohama case study. GEBCO 2024 bathymetry is used to exclude land and shallow-water cells, while CMEMS Arctic sea-ice concentration fields are used to exclude cells above selected ice-screening thresholds. The remaining feasible cells are represented as a graph, and A-star search with geodesic edge costs is used to compute shortest feasible routes. The contribution lies in the transparent integration of bathymetry and sea-ice screening into a reproducible navigation-feasibility workflow, rather than in proposing a new shortest-path algorithm. The case study evaluates a bathymetry-only baseline, date-dependent sea-ice feasibility maps, seasonal route-distance behaviour, and sensitivity to sea-ice concentration thresholds. The results show how route availability and route-distance ratio vary with the selected environmental screening assumptions. The workflow provides a practical pre-routing layer for Arctic navigation studies and can support later integration with vessel-performance, risk, and voyage-planning models.
%@ 2083-6473
%R 10.12716/1001.20.03.02