A complete guide to planning a successful hydrographic survey

The steps involved in planning hydrographic surveying near you are described below. Hydrographic surveys have a lot of purposes, such as navigational safety, resource recovery, coastline erosion evaluation, site location for submarine pipelines and cables and more. Some of these surveys are done on the open ocean while others are done nearshore. Since there are a lot of hydrographic surveys, we will help you understand how to plan one.

Hydrographic surveys require planning for many reasons. Hydrographic surveys are more costly than land surveys because of the special equipment and machines required to detect underwater features. The main reasons are to reduce costs, ensure adequate accuracies and establish the organisation.

The optimal plan for the survey will provide high accuracy data cheaply and will benefit a lot of users. It is important that the plan be flexible to allow for delays due to equipment breakdowns, inclement weather, and other unavoidable circumstances. Other reasons would include ensuring consistency, establishing goals and objectives and positioning the vessel properly in the plane.

Preliminary information

During the planning phase, the preliminary information covers all the information that can be obtained about the area that needs to be surveyed. All this information can be obtained by research or in the office. It comprises what clients provide and all the information that has been already established.

Client specifications

In hydrographic surveying, client specifications include all the information that clients require from the survey and the information clients may already have. There are different types of clients that would require a survey. Different clients have different goals and purposes. Most clients like industries such as oil, gas, fisheries, offshore mining companies and government agencies will commission the hydrographic survey and use the end results.

A gas and oil company will require specific details and charts of an un-surveyed area for resource extraction and exploration. Others use the finished product.

When the client is familiar with the survey requirement, the specifications are supplied. If they are not familiar then the requirement must be determined. Clients may specify the accuracies for vertical and horizontal controls, data accuracies, the total coverage of the area, and the scale of the chart.

Operational plan

This plan is the organisation of different methods involved in the hydrographic survey. The first thing to be determined is whether it is an offshore survey or a nearshore survey that is required. The methods needed to complete the survey can then be determined. The methods used depend on the size and shape of the area, the amount of work to be done, the amount of data to be collected and the budget.

Before hydrographic surveying near me, you must determine the horizontal and vertical controls, the position fixing techniques, the data processing and presentation procedures, and the sounding procedures. It is also necessary to determine the tidal gauge selection, the most suitable scale, and the final presentation of data. The limits of the area are set based on the requirements of the user, chart schemes, charts, and the future use of data.