1. Using Automated Solutions
Survey Validation
and
Chart Adequacy
Using Automated Solutions
Good afternoon, my name is Tyanne Faulkes and I work for NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey and I am here to present on Survey Validation and Chart Adequacy using automated solutions.
BUT first I would like to tell you a little bit about myself. One of my passions outside of hydrography is mountaineering.
T. Faulkes, NOAA Office of Coast Survey
G. Masetti and C. Kastrisios, UNH CCOM/JHC

2. Always on the outside
Until a community was found
No matter the experience, everyone humbly spoke about successes and failures to achieve perfection
Building inclusion and acceptance in other aspects in life, including ocean mapping.

3. Is Coding Like Mountaineering?
A task to achieve …
… usually a bit daunting!
You get some help
Results == satisfaction!
Why am I talking about mountaineering?
Have a goal to reach, that seems overwhelming, when you get help from your community you reach the goal, and it makes you feel good. You don’t know how many high fives I have given out when I solve a problem.
Always wanted to code, tried to do it on my own, never was successful. In a year I have gone from being coding illiterate to reading and writing code.

4. A Growing Community of People with Interests in Ocean Mapping
Pydro Universe
A NOAA Python Distribution
A Collection of Open-Source
Hydrographic Tools
A Growing Community of People with Interests in Ocean Mapping
And this community has formed itself around the Pydro Universe. But what is Pydro Universe?
Pydro is:
NOAA Python Distribution
collection of Open-Source Hydrographic Tools,
and (mostly importantly) a community of coders and users interested in Ocean Mapping.

5. Pydro Universe & HydrOffice
A Research Framework
to facilitate R2O
in Ocean Mapping
Pydro also hosts all the HydrOffice tools.
HydrOffice is a research framework focused on the ocean mapping to facilitate Research-to-Operation innovations.
Joint development agreement between the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping and NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey.

6. HydrOffice Apps
QC Tools and CA Tools.

7. QC Tools
Performs automated quality control checks on surfaces and final feature files.
Find Fliers
Feature Scan
Holiday Finder
Many more!
Grid QA
Quality analysis on bathymetric surfaces and final feature files

8. CA Tools
Performs chart adequacy tasks by comparing survey data and current ENCs
CA Tools stands for “Chart Analysis Tools”.
Automated tool to compare new survey data to the charts to find dangers to navigation and other chart discrepancies.

9. Our community has been the bedrock of our tools.
Informal feedback lead to formal feedback.

10. Of our 39 NOAA respondents, about 75% use QC Tools almost every single working day.
Valuable to the hydrographer

11. And our community is really seeing value in the tools that we are providing.
The point of this evaluation was not to stroke our egos but to try to see where we can focus our energy on further updating our tools.

12. We had our users rank the tools from their favorite to least favorite.
Grid analysis tools are very popular with our users.

13. What should we improve?
Focus today on two of these tools.
First Flier Finder.

14. What is a flier?
Anomalous data in the surface that represents itself as deep and shallow spikes.
Flier finder is a series of algorithms that help the hydrographer identify fliers.
Improvement: flier search height. Too large flier search height = missed fliers, too small = false flags & loss of production.

15. With the introduction of variable resolution surfaces, we recognize our previous methods are outdated.
Set base flier height at a certain level depending
The shallower the smaller the flier search height
Increases depending on roughness and depth variability.

16. Variable resolution surfaces = no segmentation of depth ranges.
No universal flier height.

17. Proxies Depth Identified Fliers Identified Fliers Flier Heights
Localized flier heights = per node
Proxies calculated including the median depth, roughness, and variability, Proxies give us a flier height per node. Used in algorithms to find fliers.
Really excited this innovation will provide a more robust solution which will reduce false and missed flags.

18. Now let’s look at the second tool that our community identified: Chart Comparison.
What is chart comparison?
-- monotonous task of comparing survey data to the chart.
Developed CA Tools to aid in analysis.
First I will explain the mechanics of this with a simplified cartoon.

19. z Big innovation = tilted triangle test
ENC points: soundings, features with a value of sounding, depth contours, and shoreline features.

20. z
And then creates a TIN

21. Triangulated Irregular Network
TIN:
Represents a continuous surface consisting of triangles.
Each triangle has slope and an aspect
Use in our analysis.

22. z
4.5
4.8
10.2
Let’s take this specific triangular facet as an example. It has vertices that are 4.5, 4.8, and 10.2 meters.

23. z
4.5
4.8
5.1
10.2
We have a surveyed sounding here in gold at 5.1 meters.

24. z
4.5
4.8
5.1
10.2
The original procedure compares the surveyed sounding to the three ENC vertices and if shallower, not a discrepancy.
Does not have a spatial context to where the sounding is related to others.
In this example, the surveyed sounding is deeper than not only the 4.5 sounding

25. z
4.5
4.8
5.1
10.2
But also the 4.8. Therefore it would not have been flagged.

26. z
4.5
4.8
5.1
10.2
With new process: Tilted triangle flags as discrepancy. Close to 10.2

27. Tilted Triangle Image A: New surveyed sounding in blue click
In the old method– not discrepancy – shallowest is 10m contour
New method shown in B:
- Red sounding shows the difference between surveyed sounding and the triangle face. Closer to 16m soundings

28. Flat Triangles > Point-In-Polygon Test
Challenge: what happens if all verticies are the same?
Image A surveyed 8.3 sounding. All three sides are 10 meters.
Use depth areas to get the depth range
Depth area here deeper—flagged

29. Test on simple surveys.
Output= geographic plot, .000 files of soundings that represents differences, optionally KML and shape.
Users define thresholds for DTONs & discrepancies. Default parameters for dtons less than 20m water is

30. Proof of context in flat areas, what about complex?
Large differenced near active glaciers.
CA Tools is working and proves to reduce analysis time and reduces errors associated
We are looking for new ways to improve these outputs to aid our hydrographers in reporting on their chart comparisons in the descriptive reports.

31. THANKS! Any questions? Visit: https://www.hydroffice.org
Very excited about:
improvements to flier finder– can’t wait to hear from our community about the improvements
To share what we have developed with chart comparisons
Future of improvement and development
To see more of the people in this room to become involved in coding, pydro universe and open source tools. Hope to see you coding soon.
Lastly, going to Nepal, because there are so many more places in the world to explore.