AUV Treasures

Enjoyed a geeky day at Ocean Business on Wed. I had some business to conduct and valued the opportunity to be out of the office in what I consider to be a rich learning environment. Not only are there lots of gadgets to see, there are contacts both new and old to meet; providing oodles of tit bits into the world of hydrography and the broader marine world.

Spent some time talking with colleagues at NOC (National Oceanographic Centre) about their glider programme. I then got the best invitation of the day from a chap which was "do you want to come and see my big toys?" So we went down to one of the NOC labs and he gave me a whistle stop tour of their AUVs, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles. Not to be muddled, of course, with UAVs, Unmanned Aeronautical Vehicles.

They have three AUVs at NOC. Their first could only disappear for 4 days or so before the battery ran out.

The second would last at least twice as long and was rechargeable. It can dive to 6000m.

And their latest and greatest can travel 6000km, dive to 6000m and potentially last 6 months without a battery refresh/recharge. Impressive.

I chatted to CARIS about their oceanographic charting capacity (developing...), Lockhead Martin about their Sippican XBTs and XSVs, Fugro Pelagos about emerging geospatial opportunities,
Ferry Box, Shark, about their underwater technology, OSIL about equipment support etc. You can see the fun I had can't you?

Only a year until the next one now...Oceanology 2012.

Chasing the Tsunamis

Following yesterday's horrendous earthquake in Japan yesterday you can follow the tsunami warnings running across the Pacific at the National Data Buoy Center. The flashing diamonds indicate a tsunami warning. I have never seen this website with more flashing diamonds than static until today. Check individual diamonds around Japan and you can see real spikes of data. Each spike is a simple measurement - a simple measurement of amplitude that can wipe out people's livelihoods in a second - a bland statistic that can be a measure of death toll.

Earthquakes, tsunamis - environmental phenoma with serious impacts on people. I suspect Map Action will be in full swing already.

Loch Lomond Map Falls Foul of Locals

Oh dear. It's not the first time but it is vital to check local names before publishing a map. Or else you get this. For sure, Ruth Rapids and Adams Abyss would be terribly flattering (sic) but it should only be done if (a) no other name is in use for that feature and (b) it needs labelling at all.

Maybe this would have helped?!

Geo Finds in Banbury and Oxford

A trip to see old friends in Banbury and Oxford unearthed a few interesting finds.

First off we stumbled (ahem - I navigated the family to it) a trig. A nice one - at the edge of a field but with a pretty buried BM.

We spent a couple of days in Banbury and whilst there visited the local museum. They had a sensory exhibition on Blind Art and I was very much taken with this picture in string.

Fun eh?

The next day in Oxford more treats awaited. In the Pitt Rivers Museum I stumbled across their marine navigation exhibit. [Some images have more info - click on them to read more].


And the in the Ashmolean more treats awaited in the form of Measuring Man,

some ancient maths,

a historic chart

and an upsidedown world. Purely designed for museum visitors but I loved it. It's not often you see the standard map up the other way. And why not?

Space Alert - My Head is Spinning

I spent some time with the British Geological Survey today. They gave a few presentations about all the work in which they are involved. Where do I start?

Apart from the 'standard' things you'd expect a national geological organisation to be involved with, they mentioned a plethora of European marine initiatives to which they contribute. And, yes, I was confused by the end. I'd heard of Seadatanet, One Geology [which I blogged on in Feb 08] and BLAST but not the Ocean Drilling Programme, EDMED (the European Directory of Marine Environmental Data) or MESH - Mapping European Seabed Habitats.

And whilst in Googling mode I also found EU SeaSed for shared European seismic data.

The more I Google European marine initiatives, the more I'm convinced that there are plenty out there and that I don't understand the inter-relationships between them all.

And then I became totally confused tonight when I clicked on the BGS website tonight and up popped a weather forecast for space!

But, back to earth (or substrate). This is one my brother-in-law will love - check out iGeology John!

Easy Trigs

Between my daughter and me we have pretty much wiped ourselves out healthwise for many weeks. However today, at long last, we bagged some trigs.

First off, a nice find just up from the road from A La Ronde. A fascinating building famous for its Victorian occupants and their shell loving exploits; but also architecturally beautiful. Any fancy a building survey for this 16 sided house?

TP6111 - Squirrel

Then a short drive across Woodbury Common in the sun (bliss) to bag this one.


TP7036 - Woodbury Common

I'm going to quickly run out of easy catches in Exeter. Hmmm. I suspect I'm going to have to put more effort into ticking the forthcoming trigs off my list.

The Best Made Plans...

...don't involve children.

It's not her fault but my daughter isn't well so the planned trig bagging session didn't come off and, indeed, I've been more-or-less house bound for the weekend whilst looking longingly at the beautiful sun outside.

So in a bored moment I uploaded some photos. These relate to the Geomatics PG we had on 09 Dec, the day of the student demonstration/riot. I wrote about it here.

Working hard...

Us on the RICS terrace - before we hung over the edge to get a good look at the riots.

And at dinner afterwards.


I went up to London on 10 Jan for a re-run of Martin Pratt's Michael Barrett Award lecture. A fascinating insight into the world of boundaries - both offshore and onshore. He spoke of the unending connundrums of interpreting old, small scale, datum-free maps and relating them to the modern landscape. Boundaries are easy to draw when you have no knowledge of the geography of a region - but closer inspection of the physical geography, land use, settlements - give a complex picture to unravel. And even if the surveyor knows the optimum solution, trying to explain geodetic concepts to a legal advisor can sometimes be the biggest challenge.