The UK Civil Hydrography Programme

The UK’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) is the national authority responsible for implementing the British Government’s maritime safety policy. Within this remit, the MCA is accountable for delivering national hydrographic obligations required by the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS). Working in partnership with the UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO), the MCA discharges its hydrographic responsibilities through the UK Civil Hydrography Programme. The MCA is an executive agency of the Department for Transport.

As an island state, UK waters are vital to the national economy. With over 95% of international trade travelling to the British Isles by sea, navigational safety is of paramount importance. One way in which the MCA works to prevent the loss of life, improve maritime safety and protect the marine environment is through delivery of the UK Civil Hydrography Programme.

The Civil Hydrography Programme
The Civil Hydrography Programme (CHP) is a multi-million pound (£) Government initiative to prioritise and survey the waters surrounding the UK to modern standards (IHO Order 1a) for the primary purpose of updating nautical charts and publications. Currently, around 50% of UK waters have been charted to the IHO standard.
Responsible for an area broadly in line with the UK Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) - a region of seabed in excess of 720,000km² - the CHP makes extensive use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to prioritise survey areas using a dynamic risk analysis methodology capable of reflecting the changing pressures of the maritime environment.

With the exception of the MCA's Emergency Towing Vessel (ETV) Anglian Sovereign, much of the hydrographic survey work commissioned for the CHP is undertaken by contractors offering turn-key solutions. These contractors are required to gather and report seabed data using their own personnel, equipment and vessels. Work packages are typically split between:

- Routine resurvey - navigationally critical shallow water areas with mobile seabed
- Shallow water - 0 to 40m water depth
- Medium water - greater than 40m water depth
- Anglian Sovereign - survey operations conducted onboard the MCA's Emergency Towing Vessel (ETV) during periods of standby.

To support the work of the CHP, the MCA specifies state-of-the-art survey technologies including high-resolution multi-beam echo sounders (MBES), digital side-scan sonar, magnetometry (to augment wreck detection) and Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to ensure accurate, high-quality hydrographic information is gathered. In addition, ancillary measurements are also made including, focused high-resolution multi-beam wreck investigations, wire sweeping of wrecks in less than 40m of water and seabed grab sampling.

To ensure data is gathered to the highest possible standard for navigational charting, technical personnel from both the MCA and UKHO routinely visit CHP survey vessels during scheduled operations to verify data integrity. Prior to final survey data being accepted from contractors, it passes through a rigorous quality assurance process at the UKHO's Bathymetric Data Centre (BDC). At the BDC, checks are made against items such as data density, inter-line consistency, geodetic parameters and tidal observations, for example. Once data has passed verification, it is archived in the UKHO's hydrographic database ready for inclusion in their nautical charting products.

‘Gather Once, Use Many Times'
To supplement the work undertaken by the CHP, the MCA regularly collaborates with other organisations on hydrographic projects in order to increase efficiencies under the ‘gather once, use many times' principle.
Despite the recent economic downturn, the proliferation of offshore activity across the UK construction, energy, fisheries and shipping sectors, combined with an increasing demand for areas of marine conservation, has driven Government appetite for accurate, high-resolution seabed mapping to support marine spatial planning.

In the past, Government-commissioned data gathering programmes responsible for collecting this information were on the whole uncoordinated. Following the introduction of a pan-Government Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Hydrographic Data Sharing in 2009, the MCA has championed a unified approach to hydrography across UK Government.

Under this strategy, the MCA has made the CHP more accessible by:

- co-ordinating Government-commissioned survey effort where practical;
- sharing the CHP hydrographic survey specification;
- providing technical / survey management advice and consultation;
- making CHP data freely available to MoU partner organisations; and
- making CHP seabed grab samples freely available to the British Geological Survey (BGS).

In addition, the MCA has become an active participant of the Marine Environment Data Information Network (MEDIN), a partnership of UK organisations committed to improving access to marine data, by putting forward a proposal to author a unified UK Hydrographic Survey Specification.

Civil Hydrography Annual Seminar
Building on this approach, the MCA hosts the Civil Hydrography Annual Seminar (CHAS). This year's event was held in Southampton on 4 February.
Proving increasingly popular - with over 80 attendees at this year's meeting - the event is a rare opportunity to learn of the hydrographic survey work being undertaken not just by the MCA, but by UK Government as a whole.
CHAS is the only Government lead marine event of its kind that opens its doors to the UK Hydrographic community. The aims of the seminar are:
- to provide an open forum for Government organisations to come together and consult on their data gathering programmes;
- encourage co-operative working; and to
- realise the financial benefits of co-funding such work.

A number of successful partnerships with the MCA have arisen out of CHAS, most notably the South-West Regional Coastal Monitoring Programme with the Channel Coastal Observatory (CCO), and the Dorset Integrated Survey Project with the Dorset Wildlife Trust, CCO and UKHO.

The next Civil Hydrography Annual Seminar is scheduled for February 2011.

For further information on the Civil Hydrography Programme, or the work the MCA and its partners undertake in hydrography, visit A number of downloads are available from the site including an ESRI shapefile featuring a catalogue of the MCA's multi-beam survey assets and plans, plus a PDF of the CHP annual brochure.