During the Annual General Meeting of the Hydrographic Society Benelux, held on 24 March 2010, at the edge of the construction site of the Second Maasvlakte, graduates were recognised for their theses. Some of the graduates presented their work on stage.
The jury was pleasantly surprised to be faced with a large number of high quality contributions. The first prize was for Iris Brouwer and her paper on Streamlining the Process of Water Level Reduction and Applications. There were two second prizes. Martin Valk wrote a paper on Refraction Issues with Multi-beam Echo Sounder Data, Ruben de Vries wrote his paper on Wireless Network Support for Hydrographic Applications. There were special mentions for Peter de Witte and Jan van Daem for their paper on MEMS-based INS System (for ROV applications), and for Matthieu Vrakking on Laser Scanning, Video and Multiple-sounding Systems for Management of Shipping Routes.

Students who were able to attend presented their paper, followed by a presentation by the Rotter dam Port Authorities on the construction of the Second Maasvlakte which, of course, included hydrographic issues. The first phase of this extension of the Port of Rotterdam is to be completed by 2013 as the first container terminal will then be operational. The total construc tion work is expected to last until 2030.

After the presentations, the Annual General Meeting took place. Niels Kinneging and Hessel Bakker stepped down from the council, which welcomed Alain de Wulf (secretary), Nathalie Balcaen and Jurgen Beerens.