East Australian Region

The Australasian Hydrographic Society, East Australian Region held its last meeting on 14th November 2006 at HSA Systems Pty Ltd offices in North Sydney. Forthcoming conferences in 2007 were discussed. The Australian Hydrographic Service Symposium HYDRO 2007, ‘Focus on Asia: Meeting the Interface Challenges in the Littoral Zone’ and the Ocean Mapping Group Multi-beam Course are all set to take place from 19th November to 1st December 2007.
Venessa O’Connell gave a brief on the thirteenth International FIG Congress; she attended the congress as Australian Young Ambassador promoting FIG Sydney 2010. The new chair of FIG Commission 4-Hydrography is now Andrew Leyzack of Canada. Over the last four years Commission 4 has been extremely active, with focus groups producing two publications: ‘Vertical Reference Surface’, jointly with Commission 5 and ‘Administering Marine Spaces’, jointly with Commission 7.

Venessa wrote and presented a paper entitled ‘Strategic Intentions of International Federation of Hydrographic Societies and How to Attract Young People to Hydrography’ on behalf of Paul Hornsby, chair of the International Federation of Hydrographic Societies (IFHS). The paper focused on the current shortage of surveyors in Australia and on new developments and ideas for the IFHS into the future, including the revamp of Special Publication 3, ‘Hydrographic Surveying as a Career’.

Over the next four years leading up to FIG Sydney 2010 the Commission has working groups looking at Economic Benefits of Hydrography & Capacity Building, Coastal Zone Management, and Hydrographic Surveying in Practice.

All papers and publications presented at the congress can be found on the FIG website at www.fig.net

Following the Society meeting, HSA Systems Pty Ltd demonstrated its EarthVTS Vessel Tracking and Data Analysis system based on Google Earth. The former is a web-based service developed by HSA Systems that delivers to subscribers near real-time vessel-tracking information as a layer in Google Earth.

HSA collects and manages vessel information (position, course, speed, vessel identification and cargo) from a variety of sources including AIS, Inmarsat C, Radar via VPN and direct internet connection to receiving stations. The vessel target data is then stored for live query and display. Several Australian Port Authorities, AMSA, Queensland Transport and Kordia Ltd (in association with Maritime New Zealand) supply data for the system.

All data is stored and managed in an Oracle database and secure web-server environment at HSA offices in North Sydney. Subscribers, typically source-data providers or their clients are provided with secure login access to the HSA server, which is accessed via a network link from Google Earth.

The system has been operational for six months and has received over one million database hits from more than a hundred subscriber users. The system is now averaging more than eight thousand hits per day, with peaks of over a thousand hits per hour. Current users include pilots, port authorities, customs, water police, vessel owners, vessel-logistics operators, etc. HSA provides additional services for end users for data replay and statistical data analysis.