Collaborative Research: Development and Support of the MB-System Software Package for Processing and Display of Swath Mapping Sonar Data

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Moss Landing CA

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT 0623687 (Caress/Chayes) Intellectual Merit: This work is a five-year renewal of support for the development and maintenance of the MB-system, an open source, freely available software package for the processing and display of swath mapping sonar data. It includes the development of functionality as well as visualization tools for editing bathymetry, analyzing sonar bias parameters, and real-time survey display. The work permits on-going user support, improvement of software documentation, and support for new sonar data formats. The heart of the system is an input/output library that allows programs to work transparently with any of the 61 supported swath sonar data formats. Through this approach, generic utilities can be developed that can be applied in a uniform manner to sonar data from a variety of sources. Data to which this software is applied includes bathymetry, beam intensity, and sides can data. Broader Impacts: Broader impacts of the work are increasing the infrastructure for science, serving the needs of researchers using multi-beam sonar data for marine geology and geophysics research, and facilitating data analysis and visualization. This work supports researchers at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory in New York and at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.