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Maps | Software helps countries to plot navigable waters

A local company is helping countries around the world to chart their waters.

Software from Caris, which was founded in Fredericton about 30 years ago, is used by navies and mapping companies to develop 3-D maps of the ocean.

Mark Masry, Caris's research and development manager, said mapmaking has grown much more technologically sophisticated in recent years. He said sonar and digitized broadcasting has virtually replaced compasses, pencils and paper on charting vessels.

Those new methods are so detailed that they yield billions of data points per day. The resulting information is so dense that it can be difficult for even the most sophisticated computers to process.

To lessen the workload, Caris's software uses the Csar engine to help users convert that intricate raw data into easy-to-read maps and diagrams.

"If you use Google Earth or Google Maps, these things are really big in scale, you have a huge area and lots and lots of detail to cover," Masry said.

"Our clients have a similar problem: they need a toolkit for programming code, storing it, processing it and converting it into maps of the ocean floor they can see in 3-D."

Caris's clients include:

* the Canadian Hydrographic Service (part of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans);

* the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which is a branch of the United States Department of Commerce);

* the U.K.'s Hydrographic Office (also known as the British Admiralty, which Masry said has a history as the most well-known charting agency worldwide);

* and FURGO, a Dutch multinational company that provides geotechnical, survey and geoscience services to oil, gas, mining and construction industries around the world.

Caris has offices in Washington, D.C., and Australia, but its headquarters is still in Fredericton on Waggoners lane, across from Odell Park.

Senior products manager Mike Gourley said Canada has a special edge in the sea-mapping field because of its large area of navigable water.

Masry said it's important for those skills to be put to use in every country around the world.

"All countries with navigable waters have a responsibility in the international community of charting those waters for purposes of safe navigation," he said.

"All these countries have obligations to do this and they need the tools and the means to carry that out. The role of Csar within that has to do with providing the technology to continue to support the advancement in sonar and other imagery-based data to map the sea floor."

Gourley said 3-D mapping isn't so much the way of the future as a presumption of the present.

"Seeing the sea floor in that real-world experience, in 3-D, is something that our customers around the world expect to able to do with our tools," he said.

"We have to make sure our products are ready to do that right off the shelf."