Toward automated volunteer and authoritative bathymetry discovery and comparison

Volunteered Bathymetric Information (VBI) (commonly called Crowdsourced Bathymetry, CSB) is a relatively untapped data source that could be used in many ways such as filling data gaps and informing future data collection expeditions. Determining the quality of VBI, has been difficult and time consuming leading to limited use in official nautical charts by national Hydrographic Offices. Despite this, the International Hydrographic Organization continues to collect and store CSB in its Data Centre for Digital Bathymetry (DCDB) in the hopes of widespread future use. Multiple methods of rapidly determining the quality of Volunteered Bathymetric Information are being developed, but data discovery, acquisition, management, and correlation with authoritative data remain cumbersome. In a world of limited staff and resources, automating this process will help to increase the speed with which VBI could be assessed for quality and incorporated into nautical charts, bathymetric models, survey planning, and decision-making tools. This article introduces an open-source program called VBI Compare, built to ease data discovery and management of VBI for quality calculations. VBI Compare automates interactions with the Data Centre for Digital Bathymetry and the NOAA National Bathymetric Source to locate, acquire, and manage the data required for quality calculations. As part of the data discovery process, VBI Compare ensures colocation of VBI and authoritative chart data and displays the data collected and processing status to the user. It also allows for data reputation calculations to be initiated. To demonstrate the significant efficiency of VBI Compare versus manual searching and downloading, an area near Galveston, Texas (US Gulf Coast) was used as a case study demonstrating the real-world utility of VBI Compare to a Hydrographic Office.