Maritime traffic in the Arctic is increasing, but navigational decisions in ice-covered waters are still subject to great uncertainty, even when sufficient earth observation and weather data are available. It is not possible to solve this Big Data problem manually on board a ship. Innovative approaches are needed that translate the abundance of data into decision support on board a ship. FAST-CAST 2 is intended to make a decisive contribution to transforming the data from satellite-based earth observation and weather forecasts into route suggestions through ice-covered areas at the request of a ship via app. AI techniques are used to accelerate the underlying processes and modern web technologies such as Progressive Web Apps are used to interact with the user. The project consortium is made up of two SMEs and two research institutions. In addition to the AG O2C of the University of Bremen, the project partners are Drift Noise GmbH from Bremen, the Bremen Maritime Safety Research Centre of the German Aerospace Centre and EOMAP GmbH & Co. KG from Seefeld. They combine their competences in the creation of a web service for route optimisation in the Arctic. Extensive user tests are being implemented as part of the project in order to incorporate user feedback into the software development as quickly as possible. A practical test on a research vessel (e.g. Polarstern) is also planned for this purpose. A pre-operational route optimisation service for shipping in the Arctic is being developed as part of the project. The SMEs involved see a very great future opportunity in this market segment and hope that the cooperation in this project will lead to decisive progress in this field as well as to securing and creating new jobs in this area.