As a nautical cartographer, I am sometimes involved in international meetings dealing with international standards. In November 2017, I spent a week participating in meetings of the
General Bathymetric Chart of the Ocean (
GEBCO), organized under the
International Hydrographic Office (IHO) and the UNESCO
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC). Most of the attendees were academics, representatives from hydrographic offices, or professional sonar/data management vendors.
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| Presentation by Dr. Martin Jakobsson, Stockholm University |
A major topic was the
Seabed 2030 project to map the World Ocean by the year 2030. Project lead Dr. Martin Jakobsson from the University of Stockholm pointed out that current ocean models are really based on sparse data. (Dr. Jakobsson can be seen presenting on this issue in the image at left.) The goal of the Seabed 2030 project is to enjoin organizations worldwide to work together to collect sonar data in the World Ocean so that nothing bigger than a football field (100m square area) remains unverified.
Dr. Jakobsson explained: If the ocean were divided into a grid with cells 1km x 1km in size (a kilometer is a little more than half a mile),
82% of this ocean grid would have NO sonar data to inform its depth. Most of the ocean depths are inferred from satellite-based sea surface measurements. Data from the recent search for the missing Malaysian Airlines 370 plane have demonstrated that these inferred depths of the ocean can be off by more than 1000 meters (1090 yards) in depth!
The
Seabed 2030 project has received support from the
Nippon Foundation to start a series of data collection and coordination centers at universities in the United States, Germany, Sweden and New Zealand. Hydrographic offices and surveying organizations worldwide are being encouraged to share data and resources to support this project. An accurate model of the oceans improve our ability to
manage the oceans, reduce the risks of
accidents at sea, and allow us to better
predict the effect of tsunamis.
Other GEBCO Stuff
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| Mark Zimmerman (NOAA) shares about reasearch in Alaska |
The committee meetings also reviewed projects dealing with naming undersea features, managing online mapping resources, donating new data to the mapping efforts, and outreach strategies.
They also held a one-day
mini-conference where 15 presenters demonstrated how they were collecting sonar data during scientific and fisheries management cruises, doing research on ice floes and on mid-ocean ridges, mapping tidal zones quickly with imagery, developing autonomous underwater vehicles, and other related topics.
Korean Food and Busan Sightseeing
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| Korean style lunch in a bento box |
The meetings and the conference was hosted by several Korean organizations including the
Korean Hydrographic and Oceanographic Agency (KHOA) and the
Korean Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST), who proved to be very organized and hospitable. The lunches were delicious, offering Korean, Japanese and American style meals. They also provided a couple of dinners at local Korean specialty restaurants and an evening tour of Busan. We were in a touristy part of the city, and we also spent an evening in a local shopping district. You can see more photos on my
Google Photos blog.
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