Security of the Arctic route from the resilience perspective: the ideal state, influencing factors, and evaluation

The safety issues associated with Arctic routes are a common concern for related stakeholders. To address the risks triggered by disruptions initiating from harsh environments and human-related factors, a framework based on the resilience perspective is proposed, which is considered to be different from the conventional ‘risk prediction-risk reduction’ approach. Based on an analysis of the balance between vulnerability and resilience, the ideal state of Arctic routes should be expressed as ‘low vulnerability, high resilience’, which is described in the developed Bayesian network based on the identified indicators for vulnerability and resilience. Finally, the Bayesian network is simulated to analyse the resilience level and indicator sensitivity. The interpretation of these analyses shows that the vulnerability level of the Arctic routes is relatively high, which is attributed mainly to intrinsic vulnerability, such as extreme weather, icy waters, and poor visibility. The resilience level is relatively low (R = 47.8%). Some recommendations aimed at lowering the vulnerability and improving the resilience of Arctic routes are proposed. The present study provides a resilience perspective to understand the safety issues associated with Northern Sea Route (NSR), which can be seen as the main innovation of this work.