Crowd sourcing of navigation data isn't a new idea. The US Power Squadrons and NOAA recently renewed a cooperation agreement that is over 20 years old. I sort of presume the Canadian Power Squadrons have a similar relationship with Canada Hydrographic. In the US there is a specific web page for USPS members to submit stuff like chart depth corrections, missing navigational marks, notes on corrections to the Coast Pilot, reports on facilities, etc. A good portion of the stuff you see in the Notice to Mariners originates as crowd sourced information.
I believe that the Salty Southeast Cruisers Net also has a mechanism in place for collection survey data (focusing on the Atlantic and Gulf ICWs) and passing it along to NOAA. Automating the collection process is pretty neat though. I have, on occasion, done depth runs in channels in the Carolina Sounds. Collect GPS lat/lon data correlated with observed depth. The biggest PITA was correcting for the state of tide to ease reconciliation of the collected data with the charted data. Having a device that collects lat/lon, depth, and time would allow the automation of the tide adjustment calculations and make the collected data pretty easy to incorporate into electronic charts. Rick Brass From: CnC-List [mailto:cnc-list-boun...@cnc-list.com] On Behalf Of Marek Dziedzic Sent: Monday, February 24, 2014 11:22 AM To: cnc-list@cnc-list.com Subject: Stus-List crowdsourcing depth data Hi, I stumbled onto an interesting information about the effort for crowd sourcing the depth data for the oceans (well, maybe just the seas). Since we had some recent discussions on how well the navigational waters are mapped and how accurate (and old) the chart information is, this effort might have some sense. If nothing else, an interesting idea. Have a look: http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/the-masses-will-map-the-sea I would consider joining, if I was sailing anywhere, where the maps make a difference. Marek (in Ottawa)
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