FarSounder has partnered with The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project to advance collective understanding of the ocean floor in pursuit of a complete map of the Earth’s seabed.
This partnership coincides with FarSounder’s recent Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant awarded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
This award is providing funding for the research and development of a new project that will develop a cloud-based service to share survey data collected by FarSounder customers.
The project – Enabling Expanded Crowdsourced Bathymetry Contributions With High-Quality Metadata via Commercially Sustainable Incentives to Contributors – will allow for data sharing with others across the FarSounder customer fleet and with Seabed 2030 via the International Hydrographic Organization’s (IHO) Data Centre for Digital Bathymetry (DCDB).
The DCDB archives over 30 terabytes of oceanic depth soundings and serves as the long-term archive for Seabed 2030.
Seabed 2030 is a collaborative project between The Nippon Foundation and the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO), which seeks to inspire the complete mapping of the world’s ocean by 2030, and to compile all the data into the freely available GEBCO Ocean Map.
The Project is formally endorsed as a Decade Action of the UN Ocean Decade. GEBCO is a joint programme of the IHO and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), and is the only organisation with a mandate to map the entire ocean floor.
All data collected and shared with the Seabed 2030 project is included in the free and publicly available GEBCO global grid.
“It’s a pleasure to welcome FarSounder on board as an official partner,” said Seabed 2030 Project Director Jamie McMichael-Phillips. “FarSounder plays a central role in championing crowdsourced bathymetry – which is essential to Seabed 2030. We look forward to working together, and look forward to following the company’s journey as it embarks upon its exciting new project.”
“Our commitment to contributing high-resolution data to the IHO’s DCDB aligns seamlessly with Seabed 2030’s mission of achieving a complete map of the entire ocean floor,” commented FarSounder CEO Matthew Zimmerman. “By streamlining the transfer of data from customers to the DCDB we hope to encourage broader participation, inviting more individuals to actively contribute to bridging the gaps in our understanding of the ocean.”
