Hydro International Columns

Based on some predictions, sea levels may rise by up to 1.5m by the year 2100. Such rises are likely to have severe effects on some coastal regions around the world, including many large cities. Regul...

Most continents have long histories of utilising their waterways to facilitate trade but, with a few notable exceptions, Africa has not yet taken full advantage of possible riverine trade systems. By�...

Despite the last decade’s flurry of UNCLOS ECS mapping, the amount of the oceans surveyed remains around 12%. The continuing search for the MH370 wreckage emphasises our scant knowledge of the actua...

As the size and capacity of vessels entering our ports continue to increase, mariners are challenged with navigating in increasingly constrained spaces. Mariners are demanding more accurate and higher...

Younger generations of hydrographers tend to be convinced that technological amenities, institutional development or company’s positioning, to mention but a few and depending upon where young hydrog...

Three years ago we discussed the global proliferation of large coastal hydrographic charting-based projects. The main theme being that modern technologies and methodologies have become so reliable tha...

The marine environment in the Far East has witnessed different types of overlapping claims among neighbouring coastal states’ parties. The overlapping claims often occur in cases where states’ par...

The International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) recently held its 25th Congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 16 to 21 June 2014. Commission 4, focusing on hydrography, was well represented with six...

The US Congress passed legislation to preserve national infrastructure as a back-up for GPS on 4 April 2014; spookily the Russian GLONASS system suffered an almost immediate 11 hour outage. This is po...

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit the Australian National Library in Canberra to view the exhibition ‘Mapping Our World: Terra Incognita to Australia’. This exhibition showcased some of the...

Marine environments offer different opportunities for varied aspects of human activities. On the one hand, these opportunities can be in terms of diversified natural and man-made resources both within...

In his ‘Insider’s View’ column in the September 2013 edition, the president of IHO, Robert Ward, highlighted the need for more efforts to improve the world’s “global bathymetric dataset”. ...

Many projects intended to improve maritime safety have been conducted around the world over the years, many of which have been in what might be regarded as developing regions. Great efforts have been ...

There is definite appeal to the concept of crowdsourced bathymetric data. But from where I sit as a National Hydrographer and nautical chart producer, the issues around using crowdsourced data are com...

When the world’s national Hydrographers gathered in Monaco last year for the IHO’s Conference, they considered the state of hydrographic knowledge around the world and the uncomfortable truth that...