Assessing the Performance of the Phase Difference Bathymetric Sonar Depth Uncertainty Prediction Model

Realistic predictions of the contribution of the uncertainty sources affecting the quality of the bathymetric measurements prior to a survey is of importance. To this end, models predicting these contributions have been developed. The objective of the present paper is to assess the performance of the bathymetric uncertainty prediction model for...

Comparative assessment of measured and modelled aircraft noise around Amsterdam Airport Schiphol

The impressive growth of the aviation industry and the number of flights entail several environmental repercussions, such as increased aircraft noise emissions. With the worrying number of complaints from the communities around airports comes also the distrust in numerical models used for aircraft noise prediction. In this study, we compare...

Mapping the seabed and shallow subsurface with multi-frequency multibeam echosounders

Multi-frequency multibeam backscatter (BS) has indicated, in particular for fine sediments, the potential for increasing the discrimination between different seabed environments. Fine sediments are expected to have a varying signal penetration within the frequency range of modern multibeam echosounders (MBESs). Therefore, it is unknown to...

Assessing the performance of the multi-beam echo-sounder bathymetric uncertainty prediction model

Realistic predictions of the contribution of the various sources affecting the quality of the bathymetric measurements prior to a survey are of importance to ensure sufficient accuracy of the soundings. To this end, models predicting these contributions have been developed. The objective of the present paper is to assess the performance of...

Using Alternatives to Determine the Shallowest Depth for Bathymetric Charting: Case Study

Methods for gridding multibeam echo sounder (MBES) measurements to equidistant grids are proposed as alternatives to the shallowest measured depth, which is affected by outliers. The approaches considered use a combination of mean and standard deviation of soundings and the regression coefficient from the best fitted plane. These methods...

Correcting Multibeam Echosounder Bathymetric Measurements for Errors Induced by Inaccurate Water Column Sound Speeds

In this contribution a method for correcting bathymetric measurements affected by inaccurate water column sound speed profiles (SSPs) is presented. The method exploits the redundancy in the multibeam echosounder measurements obtained from the overlap of adjacent swaths by minimizing the difference between depths along overlapping swaths. Two...

Minimum depth, mean depth or something in between?

Reliable information about the seafloor and river-bed bathymetry is of high interest for a large number of applications. A Multi-Beam echo sounder (MBES) system is able to produce high-resolution bathymetry data at relatively small cost. These measurements, providing a depth for each beam and every ping, are processed to obtain a more ordered...

Multi-beam echo-sounder bathymetric measurements: Implications of using frequency modulated pulses

In this contribution bathymetric uncertainties induced by the use of frequency modulated (FM) signals for multi-beam-echo-sounder (MBES) measurements are quantified and their relevance for MBES bathymetric uncertainty predictions is assessed. When switching to FM, the quality of depth measurements can get deteriorated due to the Doppler...