Emergency survey toolkit for naval operations

Abstract

In order to deliver the minimum safety conditions for the passage of ships towards restricted waters, urgent survey operations are required whenever one deals with natural disasters, unreliable chart information or uncharted areas. A common characteristic of these scenarios is the time pressure related with the main goal of saving human lives and to deliver, as quickly as possible, a major logistic support for the rescue operations. Real-life situations have shown that, despite all the available equipment and technical developments that have occurred, the response of the ships is still significantly delayed by the lack of confidence in seabed information. Following the Haiti earthquake disaster, it took the US Navy’s Hydrographic teams one week of survey operations before it could allow the expeditious opening of the port. In recent years, there has been a huge development in positioning and surveying technologies. Simultaneously, charts production techniques and GIS software are easily accessible; they are no longer matters for a restricted group of specialists. Cost reduction, simplicity and usability of these systems and related equipment have paved the way to the involvement of a larger number of users. Under this circumstance, this project aims to demonstrate that it is possible to develop the traditional methods, used by non surveyors, to carry out hydrographic surveys. By maximizing the use of handheld GPS receivers and of Geographic Information System applications, an evaluation of the toolkit is carried out along all the stages of the survey work, from the planning to the chart production. The restrictions of this toolkit are closely linked with the technical limitations of equipments, with the fact that onboard staffs are not surveyors, and finally with the available time. If the solution is validated, some other applications can be foreseen. Using the same sensors, it may possible to perform land surveys in support of the rescue operations. Since all the information is in digital format, one may expect its easier integration into the onboard navigational systems.