The first international conference on Satellite-Derived Bathymetry (SBD Day 2018) was held in Munich on 6 and 7 June 2018. The conference was attended by Vinka Kolić, HHI director, and Željko Bradarić, assistant director for international cooperation. The meeting was organised by EOMAP (Earth Observation and Environmental Services) based in Germany (Munich).
EOMAP is the leading global service provider of satellite-derived aquatic information in maritime and inland waters. Users of the data are primarily commercial offshore research companies as well as a large number of specialised government agencies, including hydrographic offices.
Several key issues were on the agenda, in particular the data quality standards, their availability, and integration with other spatial data. As the Adriatic Sea area is very suitable for the collecting of satellite-derived data on sea depths due to high transparency, Croatian representatives were particularly interested in the position of the International Hydrographic Organization, whose representative Dr Mathias Jonas, Secretary General, also participated in the conference.
Official position of the IHO is that the satellite-derived bathymetric data can be used by hydrographic offices worldwide, especially for the distant and insufficiently charted sea areas. The use of such data in official editions of navigational charts is not recommended, because its accuracy has not reached the IHO standards yet. However, its use is recommended for the purposes of planning the hydrographic survey priorities using traditional technologies, as well as for rapid detection of possible discrepancies between the existing data and satellite-derived data. In this context, Croatian representatives held a separate meeting with the EOMAP representative, and agreed on actions to be taken in order to obtain satellite-derived data for certain areas of interest for testing purposes.
The conference, as usual, was an occasion for meeting and exchanging views with other participants, among which worth mentioning is the one with Dr Mathias Jonas, Secretary General of the IHO. In a rather long talk several important matters of interest for the IHO and hydrographic offices were discussed. They covered the issues on the hydrographic survey by commercial companies, the electronic chart options for pleasure craft, financing the activities of hydrographic offices, the regional cooperation of hydrographic offices and cooperation with the European Commission, and the use of new technologies in basic production processes of hydrographic offices.