AusSeabed: Australian Seabed Mapping Coordination and Data

Australia's marine jurisdiction covers over 10 million square kilometres, with less than 25% of its seafloor mapped at high-resolution. The AusSeabed program is a national coordination consortium facilitated by Geoscience Australia, aiming to reduce duplication and improve data consistency. It focuses on developing a cloud-based data sharing infrastructure, common mapping tools, and standardized geomorphic mapping approaches.

Use Cases

• Planning marine survey campaigns based on the government priority plan for data acquisition.
• Assessing seabed geomorphology using the common mapping approach under development.
• Discovering and accessing existing seabed survey data through the cloud-based infrastructure.
• Applying quality assurance workflows to multibeam survey data using the program's tools.

Strengths

• Program covers a jurisdiction of over 10 million square kilometres.
• Consortium includes representatives from federal and state government, universities, and industry.
• Has produced published guidelines and a government priority plan for data acquisition.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Collaborative data acquisition and coordination by a consortium facilitated by Geoscience Australia.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-16 10:17:34.867964; freshness should be verified

Geography

Australia's marine jurisdiction, including the Antarctic Territory