Open Source Software and Hydrographic Survey Data

3D Point Cloud Editing for Quick Seafloor Extraction Analysis and Visualizations

Hydrographers and data processors are expected to produce high-quality deliverables with a swift turnaround in this present age of data collection and technological refinement. However, the cost of proprietary commercial software processing programmes has excluded many in the past. Such programmes incorporate finely-tuned tools suites and nested algorithms that have been polished and distilled over the years. However, the financial hurdles are not as high as the passion and love that these individuals carry for this explorative industry and, thankfully, open source resources and collective intelligence are changing the game. Processors are often given large datasets with requests for end product... (read more)

2020-12-01 09:08:59

Rafael Ponce

Rafael Ponce graduated from the Mexican Naval Academy and served for 25 years in the Mexican Navy, on board destroyers and other vessels, and was CO of a hydrographic ship. Ponce retired from the navy as a captain. He holds an MSc degree from the University of Southern Mississippi and is a category A hydrographer. He was deputy director of the Mexican Hydrographic Office and has worked for Esri since 2007, where he is the company’s global maritime consultant. (read more)

2020-11-23 11:22:56

Hydrospatial and the Marine Environment

The First Steps to Going Beyond Charting

Hydrographic offices (HOs) today exist in a world of accelerating technological change that is influencing human behaviour and creating new needs and ways of exploiting data to understand our world. HOs have traditionally been the producers of nautical information for safety of navigation. By the end of the 20th century, with the appearance of the IHO S-57 Standard, their main challenge was to evolve into a central database production system. Now, the critical challenge and opportunity is to evolve from there into a true geospatial agency, developing a hydrospatial information system (HIS) capable of providing products and services for multidimensional analysis... (read more)

2020-11-23 11:19:07

TCarta Develops AI-based Commercial Bathymetric Mapping Technologies

TCarta Marine has announced the development of new machine learning-based bathymetric mapping technologies – including the creation of two software packages and the commercial application of NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite – with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). “The NSF grant has brought value to the bathymetric mapping arena in many ways,” said TCarta president Kyle Goodrich. “We have applied the newly developed satellite-derived bathymetric (SDB) mapping techniques in numerous commercial and government projects worldwide.” The commercial bathymetric mapping projects relate to oil spill management, oil & gas exploration and production, coastal infrastructure engineering, environmental monitoring and geospatial intelligence activities.... (read more)

2020-10-27 10:13:41

Dawn Wright

Dawn Wright joined Esri as chief scientist in October 2011. Previously, she spent 17 years at Oregon State University as a professor of geography and oceanography, where she maintains an affiliated faculty appointment. (read more)

2020-05-26 08:50:13

“Tharp Helped Keep Me Going”

How a Treasure Map Led Her to the Bottom of the Sea

"It wasn’t always easy being a black woman in my early days as an oceanographer,” says Dawn Wright, chief scientist at a worldwide operating company specialized in mapping and spatial analytics software. But a fictional pirate and a pioneering ocean explorer helped her chart her course. I grew up in the Hawaiian Islands, so the ocean has always been a sacred place to me. My summers included many hours spent in the waves, and ample time for reading. The book that captured my imagination above all others was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. One of the central anchors of the... (read more)

2020-05-26 08:47:55

Inspiration

Ever since I was a young boy, I've always known what I wanted to be: a journalist. It has never been anything else, at least not for longer than a few days. I am not sure if the television show Lou Grant triggered my wish to report on whatever happens in the world for a newspaper or a radio station, but the series about a grumpy editor at the fictional newspaper Los Angeles Tribune certainly fuelled my ambition. I must have been around ten or eleven years old and probably didn’t understand the show at all, but I felt that... (read more)

2020-02-18 09:41:40

Danish Hydrographic Office Turns to GIS for Automated Maritime Charting

A Radical Update Was Needed

Denmark has challenging seascapes to map and chart. It has a rich history of nautical charting that dates back to the seventeenth century, and many of its navigational products for Greenland were created in the 1960s. When GPS started to gain prominence, a radical update was needed. Apart from its 42-mile land border with Germany, the peninsular country of Denmark, with its scores of bays, straits, and fjords, is surrounded almost entirely by the North and Baltic Seas. Denmark is also composed of more than 400 islands, including the Faroe Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean between the United Kingdom... (read more)

2019-12-19 02:23:42

Map Shows Warming Waters Where Coral Reefs Could Be Under Threat

The ocean is increasingly becoming too hot to handle and coral reefs are suffering as a result, according to a recent publication on Mongabay, a website with news and inspiration from nature's frontline. Above-normal sea surface temperatures due to human-induced climate change are creating conditions that are stressing coral reefs, causing them to bleach, a phenomenon by which heat-stressed corals are forced to expel the symbiotic algae that provide them with nutrition, leaving them weak and ghostly white. If the heat stress persists for too long, reefs may never recover, and even die. A new interactive map has been made... (read more)

2019-06-17 02:43:46

Winners Announced in XPRIZE for Advancements in Autonomous Ocean Exploration

XPRIZE, a global leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, has announced winners in the US$7M Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, a global competition to advance ocean technologies for rapid, unmanned and high-resolution ocean exploration and discovery. The results were revealed at an awards ceremony hosted at the world-renowned Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, part of the Oceanographic Institute, Prince Albert I of Monaco Foundation. The grand prize winner, receiving a total of US$4M, was GEBCO-NF Alumni, an international team based in the United States, while KUROSHIO from Japan claimed US$1M as the runner-up: GEBCO-NF (International) – Led by... (read more)

2019-06-03 09:25:26