Abstract
Abstract. This paper represents the overview of hydrographic surveying and different types of modern and traditional surveying equipment, and data acquisition using the traditional single beam sonar system and a modern fully autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) IVER3. During the study, the data sets were collected using the vehicles of the Great Lake Research Center at Michigan Technological University. This paper presents how to process and edit the bathymetric data on SonarWiz5. Lastly, it compares the accuracy of the two different sonar systems in the different missions and creates 3D models to display and understand the elevations changes. Moreover, the 3D models were created after importing the data sets in the same coordinate system. In this study, the data sets were recorded by two different sensors in the two study locations in the Keweenaw Waterway in Michigan, U.S. between the cities of Houghton and Hancock. The first one equipment is the Lowrance HDS-7 sonar on the surveying boat, and other one is the EdgeTech 2205 sonar on the fully AUV of IVER3. One of the purposes of this study is to explore the sonar post processing programs, which are very important to interpret sonar and bathymetric data, and obtained the same coordinate system of the study areas. During the project, three main processing programs were used. The first one is UnderSee Explorer 2.6, which has been used to process the data sets of Polar SV boat. Secondly, EdgeTech Discover 4600 bathymetric software used EdgeTech 2205 sonar data sets to create bathymetric files that were used in SonarWiz5. Lastly, SonarWiz5 sonar processing software can be used to process the data sets. After the data acquisition and the data process, six profiles from the first study area and the five profiles from the second study are created to compare the data sets and elevations difference. It is shown that single beam sonar might miss some details, such as pipeline and quick elevation changes on seabed when we compare to the side scan sonar of IVER3 because the single side scan sonar can acquire better resolutions to understand the 3D features, such as pipelines, reliefs etc.
Highlights
Hydrographic surveying is the measurement of the depth of water bodies from the water surface and charting of the seafloor using surveying measurements and sonar for navigation maps, marine construction, offshore oil exploration and drilling, an underwater pipeline, etc
It is shown that single beam sonar might miss some details, such as pipeline and quick elevation changes on seabed when we compare to the side scan sonar of IVER3 because the single side scan sonar can acquire better resolutions to understand the 3D features, such as pipelines, reliefs etc
After the data acquisition and the data process, and editing the data sets, SonarWiz5 Software was used to create the digital elevations models of the study areas using more than 350,000 observations from autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) IVER3 sensor, and to display the three dimensional surfaces using the interpolation method on SonarWiz5
Summary
Hydrographic surveying is the measurement of the depth of water bodies from the water surface and charting of the seafloor using surveying measurements and sonar for navigation maps, marine construction, offshore oil exploration and drilling, an underwater pipeline, etc. Hydrographic surveyors use sonar systems to measure the distance from the seafloor or ocean floor. This technique uses sound propagation to navigate and detect objects from the surface vessels and underwater vehicles. U.S ports, a main part of the naval transportation system might have the challenge of rising freight movements, so creating a useful bathymetric contour map is very important to developing countries' economies (NOAA, 2012). Due to the strategic location of Lake Superior, which is the largest of the Great Lakes of North America, it has an important role in American history It has been a tactical commercial waterway for people who live around the Great Lakes, so the U.S government excavated many canals and connected many towns using canal systems to transfer goods. That task becomes hard in a case of different software and equipment diversity
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