Modern Methods Used by the Canadian Hydrographic Service for Compiling Bathymetric Data
The Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) is revolutionizing the production of Electronic Navigational Charts (ENC) by collaborating with Teledyne CARIS to develop and enhance automated tools. This groundbreaking workflow aims to drastically improve efficiency, consistency, and quality in bathymetric chart production, while freeing up cartographers to focus on more complex tasks.
The workflow, centred around the use of Process Designer tools, automates the processing and production of bathymetric data into navigational chart products. The process involves several key steps:
- Data Ingestion and Preparation Raw bathymetric data, collected from surveys (multibeam echo sounders, side scan sonar, etc.), are imported into the CARIS software environment. Data cleaning, quality control, and initial corrections (e.g., tide reductions, sensor offsets) take place to prepare accurate bathymetric surfaces.
- Automated Feature Extraction and Processing Using Process Designer, configured workflow scripts automate the identification, extraction, and attribution of relevant bathymetric features such as depth contours, soundings, and seafloor characteristics. This includes applying hydrographic specifications for ENC features.
- Feature Attribution and Verification Automated routines assign necessary feature attributes adhering to the S-57/S-101 ENC encoding standards. These include depth values, feature geometry, and metadata. Process Designer workflows may trigger validation checks to ensure consistency and compliance with CHS quality standards.
- ENC Object Creation and Compilation Extracted features are compiled into ENC objects within the CARIS ENC production modules. This step integrates bathymetric layers with other nautical chart elements and prepares datasets for final ENC output.
- Quality Assurance and Validation Automated and manual quality assurance steps confirm the accuracy, completeness, and display fidelity of the bathymetric features within the ENC. This can include automated comparison against source data and cross-referencing with existing charts.
- Generation of ENC-Ready Product The completed bathymetric features and associated ENC objects are exported in ENC formats (S-57 or S-101) ready for distribution to navigational users.
This workflow is proving to be outstanding tools for cartographers, providing a safe and useful navigational product to the mariner while requiring much less effort from the CHS staff. Early positive preliminary results have earned the confidence of cartographers and hydrographers, demonstrating the potential for significant capacity building in the world of hydrography to ensure an optimal contribution to the safety of life at sea and to the various aspects of the blue economy.
The CHS is envisioning a near future where any new product or update to an existing ENC is compiled using automated tools. The development of complete and integrated automatic compilation tools and automated workflows meets the needs of modern cartographers and hydrographers, providing valuable and necessary teaching and support tools for future generations.
In 2019, a literature review found no usable solution for automatically generating ENC-ready depth contours and soundings. However, the CHS is working on new models where the resulting automatically generated bathymetry and quality of data features are replacing the existing features in the relevant product usage band into the hydrographic product database.
The contouring workflow involves preparing a point cloud, creating and generalizing the coastline, and creating depth contours. The sounding selection workflow, on the other hand, involves preparing the point cloud surface and selecting soundings. The contours and sounding selection are consistent across the product and across the entire portfolio of products.
The CHS collaborated with Teledyne CARIS to develop and enhance tools in Process Designer. The results from the automation are reproducible if processed using the same parameters and are optimal. This workflow allows the creation of the coastline, the depth contours, and the sounding selection, requiring minimal human interactions, decision-making, and manual work.
Adopting, developing, and improving this modern approach to classify bathymetry and automated workflows provides valuable and necessary teaching and support tools for cartographers. The automated creation of ENC-ready bathymetric features using Process Designer tools is a significant step forward in the field of hydrography, improving the safety and efficiency of navigational chart production.
- The CHS's workflow, which includes automated tools for bathymetric data processing and feature extraction within the Process Designer software, is proving to be a significant step forward in the field of environmental-science, specifically in climate-change research, as it contributes to the production of accurate navigational charts essential for mitigating the risks of sea level rise and extreme weather events.
- Data-and-cloud-computing plays a crucial role in the CHS's automated workflow, as the collaboration with Teledyne CARIS has enabled the storage, processing, and analysis of vast amounts of bathymetric data, thereby enhancing the efficiency and quality of climate-change related environmental-science research.
