Swath Mapping Data Management Within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

In 1983, the United States proclaimed the establishment of a maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extending beyond the territorial sea to a distance of 200 nautical miles from its coastline. The proclamation reserved for the U.S. the sovereign right to explore for, exploit, conserve, and manage all natural resources within this new 3.4 million square nautical mile territory, an area roughly 1.2 times the total U.S. land mass. In order to help determine the characteristics and resources of the U.S. EEZ, a detailed program was developed to systematically map the entire area using multi-beam swath sounding systems. The program is under the direction of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), United States Department of Commerce. Field operations commenced in early 1984 as two NOAA ships, equipped with advanced bathymetric swath mapping and precision navigation capabilities, began surveying off the coast of central California. Two additional ships have been added since and, to date, 36,000 square nautical miles of bathymetric mapping have been completed, a product of 95,000 lineal nautical miles of swath sounding. With such an enormous amount of data produced by swath mapping systems, the necessity for a comprehensive data management program was recognized early in the project. This paper describes the two-level data management system that has evolved, the lower level utilized aboard NOAA ships that acquire and initially process swath data, and the upper level employed by the Ocean Mapping Section, which is responsible for receiving, verifying, final processing and archiving all bathymetric swath data