Advances in Ocean Mapping and Nautical Cartography

Dear Colleagues,

Although modern technologies have produced significant improvements in our daily survey operations, only a small fraction of the ocean’s seafloor has been mapped with sufficient quality and appropriate resolution, greatly affecting our ability to understand our oceans and safely navigate them.

Triggered by this current situation, and in conjunction with the pivotal role of ocean mapping in understanding and preserving our planet, several initiatives (e.g., the Nippon Foundation GEBCO Seabed 2030 project, the AusSeabed program, the NOAA Standard Ocean Mapping Protocol) are focusing on increasing the efficiency and the productivity of ocean mapping activities. With a significant amount of data being collected for many purposes beyond just the safety of navigation, data handling will likely urge the adoption by cartographic agencies of more automated and smarter algorithms/workflows.

This Special Issue of Geomatics aims to contribute to the described scenario by gathering research articles, reviews, and short communications on all aspects of ocean mapping and nautical cartography, including (but not limited to):

• Methods and techniques to improve efficiency in the collection of ocean mapping data.
• Automated analysis and identification of blunders, artifacts, and inconsistencies in ocean mapping data.
• Evaluation of chartability for ‘unconventional’ data sources (e.g., crowd sourced bathymetry, satellite derived bathymetry).
• Improvements on existing data processing workflow and management, with a focus on open-source initiatives.
• Applications of ocean mapping data to better understand the world (e.g., habitat mapping, sea level rise).
• Optimized and repeatable algorithms for nautical cartography.

Dr. Giuseppe Masetti
Dr. Ian Church
Dr. Anand Hiroji
Dr. Ove Andersen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Geomatics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.