A team of graduate fellows from The Nippon Foundation’s (NF) General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) Postgraduate Certificate in Ocean Bathymetry Training Programme, run at the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire, will be taking part in the $7million Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE.
GEBCO is a joint project of the International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO – the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. It has its origins in the GEBCO chart series initiated in 1903 by Prince Albert I of Monaco. GEBCO is the only international project with a mandate to map the floors of the global oceans.
The GEBCO-NF team have entered this three-year global competition aimed at challenging teams to advance breakthrough technologies for autonomous, fast and high-resolution ocean exploration. The new competition is part of XPRIZE’s 10-year ocean initiative in a commitment to launch five multi-million dollar prizes by 2020 “to address critical ocean challenges and help make the oceans healthy, valued and understood”.
The GEBCO team will address the key elements of the challenge: seabed mapping first at 2,000 metres, then at 4,000 metres with a five metre and 0.5 metre vertical resolution. The deadline for submission of documents is 15 December, with field tests taking place late next year. Results will be announced in December 2018.
The inspiration to enter a team for the challenge came last June from the NF-GEBCO Forum for Future Ocean Floor Mapping, held in Monaco and attended by 150 senior representatives, scientists and scholars from major ocean-related and international organisations. A key aspect of the Forum was the celebration of 12 years of the Ocean Mapping Training Programme, funded by The Nippon Foundation, attended by 48 graduate fellows. The GEBCO-NF team entering the competition comprises graduate fellows from Israel, Poland, Russia, the UK, USA, Japan and Malaysia, as well as technical advisers from Norway, the USA, UK, The Netherlands and New Zealand.
“The core group currently represents six different years of the programme and seven different coastal states”, says Rochelle Wigley, Director of the New Hampshire Ocean Mapping Course and a member of the team. “The seven alumni leading this initiative come from diverse backgrounds in industry, the Navy and research, and it is this diversity which gives the team its strength. These alumni are part of the future of ocean mapping and the networks they are building cross national borders and bring together diverse people with a passion for the ocean”.
Her views are endorsed by Hadar Sade, a graduate fellow from Israel, who is also part of the team. “We have all taken up the challenge that our oceans and seas are our future – the common heritage of mankind,” he says.
The Monaco Forum endorsed NF-GEBCO’s vision for mapping the ocean floor by the year 2030, or Seabed 2030 – with the creation of “a high resolution digital map, from the coast to the deepest trench of the ocean that enables scientists to explore and understand how the oceans work, shaping maritime policy and supporting the management of natural marine resources for a sustainable Blue Economy”.
A joint comment from Jyotika Virmani, Senior Director of Energy and Environment for XPRIZE, and Dawn Wright, Chief Scientist at Esri, the mapping software platform that will support the XPRIZE, remarked that “over 60% of the Earth’s surface has not yet been mapped. The ocean covers 70% of our planet’s landmass, and of that, less than 15% of the seafloor has been mapped at a resolution finer than 5kms. In fact, we have higher resolution maps of the entire surface of the Moon, Venus and Mars than we do of our own Earth. But this situation can be changed”.
Further technological support is being provided by Kongsberg Maritime, one of the world’s leading sonar and AUV manufacturers.
Describing the team’s task, Robin Falconer, Chairman of the NF-GEBCO Forum’s organising committee, who has coordinated the GEBCO-NF challenge, remarked “almost all the key elements required for the challenge already exist but are used in other applications. Putting them together to meet the XPRIZE application is what we will do”.
For more information, please contact:
Robin Falconer (robinfalconerassociates(at)paradise.net.nz)
Patrick Orr (patrick(at)raittorr.co.uk)
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