Problems and tasks for the development of the Russian standards and requirements for engineering and design hydrographic surveying
Authors: Firsov Yu. G. 
Published: December 2024

The current state and issues of standardization of hydrographic surveys performed for engineering purposes on inland water areas, coastal zone of the seas and continental shelf examined. There is a variety of existing regulatory documents based on outdated norms and rules of traditional analog hydrography issued more than forty years ago. There are a number of regulatory documents governing the survey of the bottom relief in order to ensure hydraulic construction, dredging, construction of structures on the continental shelf, as well as special surveys on the downstream of hydroelectric power plants that do not meet modern requirements. These documents have been updated several times in recent years, however, their content has not fundamentally changed and still remained inconsistent with modern technological capabilities of international hydrography. In the 90s of the 20th century, there was a technological breakthrough in the development of means and methods of hydrographic research, which was first reflected in the fourth edition of the S‑44 Standards of the International Hydrographic Organization. The fourth edition of the S‑44 Standards marked the beginning of a new era of modern digital and electronic hydrography, based on the concept of “survey orders,” due to the new capabilities of global navigation satellite systems, multibeam echo sounders and electronic hydrographic information systems. The new paradigms of digital hydrography, first introduced in the S‑44 Standards, Edition 4 (1998), were developed in the 5th (2008) and 6th (2022) editions. The paper analyzed the main norms of the current regulatory documents of engineering hydrography adopted at the beginning of the 21st century: RD31.74.04–2002, SNiP 11–02–96, SP 11–104–97, SP 11–114–2004, as well as similar documents of the last decade: SP 317.1325800.2017, SP 47.13330.2016 and SP 504.1325800.2021. It is shown that all these documents are based on the conceptual provisions of analog hydrography contained in the Rules of the Hydrographic Service № 4, part 2, published by the Main Directorate of Navigation and Oceanography of the Ministry of Defense in 1984. Particular attention is paid to the criteria for assessing the survey quality (precision, accuracy and reliability) of the results of bottom topography. In particular, the assessment of the precision of the horizontal and vertical position in analog hydrography according to the Rules of the Hydrographic Service № 4, part 2, is carried out with a confidence probability of 63–68 %, while the S‑44 Standards use a confidence probability of 95 %. As a result, the permissible uncertainty of the corrected depth according to the S‑44 Standards is twice as high as according to the domestic rules of the hydrographic service and some current regulatory documents of engineering hydrography. It is noted that some of the current regulatory documents of engineering hydrography do not take into account the new capabilities of hydrographic hydroacoustic equipment, including multibeam echo sounders, bathymetric side scan sonars and lowfrequency echo sounders for studying the bottom relief and the upper part of the bottom section for engineering and other scientific purposes. It is indicated that the new paradigm of the S‑44 Standards (2022) is the introduction of the concepts of “bathymetric coverage,” “object detection” and “object search” which led to the possibility of implementing a new tool the “specification matrix” for design and formation of brief hydrographic survey characteristics, also appropriate for the engineering surveys. It is noted that the new Russian specifications for the performance of both traditional and engineering hydrographic surveys, based on the Standards of the S‑44 International Hydrographic Organization, are absent, and their development, coordination and approval is urgently needed.