New standards for hydrographic surveys recommended by the International Hydrographic Organization (6th edition of S-44)

The International Hydrographic Organization (OHI) published, in September 2020, the 6th edition of the publication S-44 ‘IHO Standards for Hydrographic Surveys’. This publication was designed to be technologically independent and structured to allow the classification of any hydrographic survey, regardless of its purpose.  

For navigation safety purposes, the 6th edition of S-44 continues the previous classification of hydrographic surveys by orders, adding a new ‘Exclusive’ order for areas considered even more critical for navigation, whose requirements are more demanding than those of the special order. In this issue, the ‘baptometric coverage’ is introduced as a new criterion in the classification of the surveys to the detriment of the previous base spacing between wires, which was only adapted to the acoustic systems and recommendations on metadata, structures detection and batimetric modeling are also presented.

However, the greatest innovation of the 6th edition of the S-44 of OHI is the implementation of a matrix of criteria and attributes that aims to enable the classification of hydrographic works performed for the most diverse purposes according to the characteristics achieved. Publication S-44 is a reference for the hydrographic community in general and for all the Member States of OHI, which assume national and international competences related to navigation safety and nautical cartography. This edition also aims to meet the needs of all entities (publics or privates) that need hydrographic data, in particular as a tool to support the decision to define prerequisites adapted to its objectives, such as in other industries and sciences: exploration of gas and oil, renewable energies, dredging, marine biology, geophysics, geology and geotechnics.

The Hydrographic Institute and the Brazilian Navy together are translating the new publication into Portuguese, which will be available soon.

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