US Hydro, Mobile Alabama Convention Center

Hydrospatial: The Next Frontier of Hydrography

About the Event,

The theme that we have chosen for our conference reflects the relevance that our profession and related sciences have in the marine geospatial world. In some circles we are discussing the profile of “the hydrographer of the future” (the Canadian Hydrographic Service is leading a series of workshops on this topic), what they have to learn and to know, how technology is affecting their activities: the speed and amount of data being collected (Big Data), the wide variety of sensors and platforms used (IoT), the speed and efficiency in data analysis (AI and Deep Learning), the ways in which these data become information and is accessed by different kinds of users (Cloud services, Kubernetes) and new formats and standards (S-100, voxels).

All of the above and the increased attention of international bodies on the oceans, like the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM), the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, the GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, and the IHO vision towards Marine Spatial Data Infrastructures are elevating (evolving) our profession to become geospatial data analysts of the water, or hydrospatial data analysts, joining a select group of professionals in the geospatial world.