New Periods Arrive at CARIS Conference

During the 15th CARIS Users’ Conference it became evident that GIS technology is becoming a standard within the hydrographic industry. Development of the Blue Economy brought the 176 hydrographic participants together at the CARIS Users’ Conference. The event covered two days of hands-on CARIS workshops, two-day conference sessions and on the last day the participants were given a tour of the SHOM premises.

CARIS highlighted once more that it plays an innovative role within the hydrographic environment. Within the Pacific, together with Teledyne Odom and Liquid Robotics CARIS developed an automatic on board processing technology and showed that unmanned surveying is possible and around the corner. Together with the direct access to the Marine ­bathymetric databases for further distribution via the World Wide Web, CARIS has also shifted its ­attention slightly. In addition to the always strong presence in the Hydrographic Offices domain, CARIS now also focuses more on the oil and gas industry.

A wide range of topics were covered during the conference session programme. A number of customers shared their experiences on implementing their database for the management of bathymetry within CARIS BDB as well as the spatial information within CARIS HPD. Large as well as small organisations seem to be in final stages of migration towards a digital database approach in contrast to the more survey and chart-oriented production workflows.

The participants were able to visit one of the many exhibitors during the breaks. Several exhibitors also presented their solutions. A particularly interesting session was when different producers, including Kongsberg and Kraken, gave presentations on Synthetic Aperture sonar systems. The Synthetic Aperture Sonar systems can reach a very high resolution independently of the range.

The many posters on research projects conducted across the world give a good overview. Unfortunately, this magnificent information and these images have not yet been made more public via the digital world. This could provide more support and interest in our oceans and the wonders we have down there.