Multi-beam Sonar Training Course

Associated British Ports (ABP) Port of Southampton, UK, is to host the 56th international training course for multibeam survey operators in March this year. The six-day, 36-lecture course has previously been delivered in 55 locations worldwide. This is the first time that the course has been hosted by ABP. The course will take place in the Port of Southampton's QEII cruise terminal in the Eastern Docks.

The course is designed to provide a theoretical and practical background in marine swath survey technology and techniques, which can be applied to a variety of applications such as hydrographic surveys; continental shelf boundary delimitation; offshore engineering; harbour dredging; fisheries habitat; route survey; and scientific research.

The course is taught by professors from the Ocean Mapping Group, University of New Brunswick (Canada); and the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping, University of New Hampshire (USA).

The course provides overviews of:
• The technology and problems associated with shallow water multibeam surveys
• Processing and visualisation techniques designed to address the complexities of swath mapping
• Constraints on using swath bathymetry to produce highest quality data