Abstract
<p class="Abstract">Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs), official databases created by a national hydrographic office and included in Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS), supply, among essential indications for safe navigation, data about sea-bottom morphology in terms of depth points and isolines. Those data are very useful to build bathymetric 3D models: applying interpolation methods, it is possible to produce a continuous representation of the seafloor for supporting studies concerning different aspects of a marine area, such as directions and intensity of currents, sensitivity of habitats and species, etc. Many interpolation methods are available in literature for bathymetric data modelling: among them kriging ones are extremely performing, but require deep analysis to define input parameters, i.e. semi-variogram models. This paper aims to analyze kriging approaches for depth data concerning the Bay of Pozzuoli. The attention is focused on the role of semi-variogram models for Ordinary and Universal kriging. Depth data included in two ENCs, namely IT400129 and IT400130, are processed using Geostatistical Analyst, an extension of ArcGIS 10.3.1 (ESRI). The results testify the relevance of the choice of the mathematical functions of the semi-variogram: Stable Model supplies, for this case study, the best performance in terms of depth accuracy for both Ordinary and Universal kriging.</p>
Highlights
The knowledge of the seabed conformation allows safe navigation [1], and the development of new frontiers for other kind of studies such as those on directions and intensity of currents [2], sensitivity of habitats and species [3], [4], and other activities such as maintenance dredging [5], coastal infrastructure protection [6] etc
Ordinary and Universal kriging are applied to the chosen dataset by varying all mathematical semi-variogram models available in Geostatistical Analyst
Those models are described in the literature and some of them are very recurrent in kriging applications, so the readers could referrer to specific papers on this matter, e.g. [71]-[74]
Summary
The knowledge of the seabed conformation allows safe navigation [1], and the development of new frontiers for other kind of studies such as those on directions and intensity of currents [2], sensitivity of habitats and species [3], [4], and other activities such as maintenance dredging [5], coastal infrastructure protection [6] etc. The Hydrographic Institute of the Italian Navy (Istituto Idrografico della Marina Militare - IIMM) represents the primary public authority in the study and analysis of the sea depths surrounding the Italian peninsula [7]. It is, the only institution that can produce certified cartography for navigation in Italy. Single beam sonar (SBS) and multi beam sonar (MBS) determine the depth of any waterbody by using sound beams They measure the time lag between transmitting and receiving a signal that travels through the water, springs back the seafloor, and returns to the sounder; the time lag is converted into a range using the known speed of sound [8]. A good level of information about seabed morphology can be extract by multispectral satellite images, even if only in shallow water (depths less than 20 meters) [10], [11]
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