GovWire

The UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) has launched the Seabed Mapping App as part of its Seabed Mapping Services, available via the ADMIRALTY Marine Data Portal.

The ADMIRALTY Marine Data Portal is the UKHOs portal for wide-ranging data sets from seabed to surface. This includes bathymetry and seabed profiles, seabed geology and seabed samples and pipelines, cables and subsea infrastructure - gathered through close collaboration with expert providers, government organisation, hydrographic offices and other partners around the world. To enable marine environmental data sets to be more available and accessible for users, for more useful marine decision-making and to support safe, secure and thriving oceans.

Two years ago the UKHO launched a Beta version of the app, as part of an iterative approach, UKHO experts have been working closely with various user groups academia, government and commercial companies - to gather their feedback and continually test and improve the service. The service supports the GEBCO Seabed 2030 project and the launch of upcoming UKHO-led projects in this space.

The UKHO is a member of the Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN), a partnership of UK organisations committed to improving access to UK marine data.The new Seabed Mapping App, provides access to extensive UK bathymetry holdings held within our Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN) accredited National Data Archive, and download bathymetry data which is freely available under the UKHO Bathymetry Data Licence (similar to an Open Government Licence or OGL).

Guided by feedback from different user groups, the new Seabed Mapping App includes improvements to the interface of the app and added new services, including a web map tile which provides context and helps users identify the data sets they want to download. By providing a visual backdrop and elevating the Digital Elevation Model of the seabed, this helps users to gain a better understanding of the available surveys.

To support a more seamless user journey the Seabed Mapping App has also seen the addition of new filtering tools following different criteria - such as the survey capturing date and data resolution - resulting in a much quicker narrowing down of users data set search and a more streamlined download. Additionally, we have conducted substantial work across our 6000 data sets of cleansing the data, standardising the content, improving the titles, abstracts, and the metadata content, supporting the rollout of the latest MEDIN Discovery Metadata Standard. This metadata standard is a marine profile of the UK Government Standard GEMINI2 and complies with other international conventions such as INSPIRE and ISO19115. More information on this can be found on the MEDIN website.

The new Seabed Mapping Service has developed to become a fully fit for purpose, 21st century digital data archive, ensuring it fulfils user needs, and enables marine academia, public and private sector communities to access cleansed bathymetry data sets for decision-making affecting the marine environment.