With the help of institutions like UNH and industry, NOAA undertook the task of updating its charts. Recharting the first 40,000 miles of waters deemed most critical will take two decades to complete. C-COM and JHC focus on two major areas. The second is to establish a learning center to educate a new generation of hydrographers and ocean-mapping scientists to meet the needs of government agencies and the private sector. Software supporting the surveyed data allow users at C-COM's Chase Ocean Engineering Lab to maneuver around maps of the river as if it were a video game.
Users can move from one end of the river to the other in seconds.
Substructure Inc. is one example of present and future applications of hydrography. The company provides diving and geophysical surveys, including mooring work and finding underwater cables and pipelines. This is the first survey that gives you topography of the harbor. We've got a good idea of what the physical attributes of the bottom look like, but this fills in the gaps. Substructure's surveying ships are manned with computers that could integrate C-COM's mapping system into its operations.