Editorial

Question: What did you, your organisation or company do on World Hydrography Day (in case you forgot: the 21st of June) to promote hydrography outside the circle of the hydrographic industry? Most of us are convinced that hydrography is not getting enough attention, for example, from the youth to see hydrography as a profession and in the public sector, i.e. politicians, in order to get the necessary budget allocated. See e.g. the article on page 26 by Ron Macnab: “Has Ocean Mapping Been Blindsided by Rocket Science?” or the common complaint I hear from national hydrographers: we are doing important work for the safety of the mariners, the environment and the economy of our country, but we are not getting the budget we need to do our task.
On the issue of the lack of young surveyors: it is too easy to blame the youth for not being interested in technical studies or for preferring a 9-to-5 office job. However, we should look at ourselves: what have we done to promote our profession as an attractive job opportunity? We have to emerge from our own inner circle and tell the world what we are doing and its relevance for safety, the environment, economy and what a nice and varied job it is, i.e. the arguments we tell each other so many times. In our January issue (with the theme Human Resources), one of the authors mentioned an almost untapped source: females. Not only do they comprise 50% of the world population, but also, in general, they do better than males in technical studies. In the last few months, I have come across several examples of attracting the interest of females to hydrography, such as the ‘Girls’ Day’ of the Austrian Waterway Authority (see 1 and 2) and the initiative of the Hydrographic Society Russia and the Hydrographic Faculty of the St Petersburg Naval Institute in organising open days, where it turned out that the opportunity was taken up more enthusiastically by girls than by boys. In contrast to these positive signs is the closing down (hopefully temporarily) of the courses on hydrography and nautical charting at the International Maritime Academy Trieste, Italy.
I am fully aware that writing on the relevance of our profession and job opportunities in Hydro International (such as in this editorial) is not very helpful as most readers of this magazine already belong to the ‘inner-circle’. We must arouse interest outside our own hydrographic circle because telling things to the inner circle of hydrographers is like peeing in the trousers of your dark blue uniform in the dark: it gives you a warm feeling but no-one sees it.

Well, now I’m not left with much room to write something on ‘data management’ (the theme of this issue), but we have selected some articles for you that you will no doubt read with interest. I would like to draw your attention to the articles that deal with the availability of data such as MESH and MSDI. A study on the cost–benefit ratio of the use of (our) spatial data could very well motivate the dedication of more attention and financial support to data collection and its use.

Enjoy reading,

Leeke van der Poel