World Hydrography Day 2013

The Hydrographic Society Benelux highlighted World Hydrography Day 2013 (WHD’13) with a workshop dedicated to the theme of WHD’13: ’Hydrography – underpinning the blue economy’.

The workshop was organised in Scheveningen (the port of The Hague), a fishing port. Two deep-sea trawlers (length > 110m, GT >6,000) owned by Jaczon BV were berthed for maintenance and participants were invited to visit the ships for an explanation by their skippers on the use of oceanographic parameters and sonar equipment to catch fish in pelagic fishing operations. An interesting subject (water column imaging) for hydrographers. Rijkswaterstaat’s survey vessel Zirfea was berthed nearby the fishing vessels, enabling the participants to visit this ship.

The workshop was held on the premises of the fish auction.
Presentations were given on:

• Open Earth Data: a community approach for managing and visualising dynamic coastal bathymetry data by Gerben de Boer (Deltares). OpenEarth is a free and open source initiative to deal with data, models and tools in marine & coastal science & engineering projects. In current practice, research, consultancy and construction projects spend a significant part of their budget on setting up a basic infrastructure for data and knowledge management. ­OpenEarth aims for a more continuous approach to data & knowledge management. 
• ’Zandmotor’ (Sand engine): Pilot project for coastal defence using nature by Arjen Luijendijk (Deltares). The ‘Zandmotor’ (Sand engine) concept is an innovative way of coastal defence as well as coastal maintenance. 
• Military Hydrography: rapid environmental assessment and capacity building by CDR RNlN T. Hamburger. He mentioned the tasks of the ­Netherlands Hydrographic Service, then highlighted less familiar aspects like the task of ensuring the physical environment information for ’out of area’ operations of the Royal Netherlands Navy. Another aspect is supporting capacity building with hydrographic services. 
• The Netherlands Hydrographic Institute (NHI), presented by Mr N. Kinneging (Rijkswaterstaat), was founded in 1986 to strengthen and formalise the cooperation between the Hydrographic Service of the Royal Netherlands Navy and Rijkswaterstaat of the Ministry of Transport. It improved the surveying capacity and promoted exchange of data. A changing environment, innov­ations and organisational changes encouraged adaptation to this of the agreement. 

After the interesting presentations, Dutch herring and Jenever were served (in line with a workshop in a fishing harbour) as a start to the networking session.