Australian Bathymetric Datum Reconciliation and Uncertainty Analysis

Research from Project 114 of the Co-operative Research Centre for Spatial Information presents a methodology for reconciling bathymetric height datums in Australia. The work focuses on calculating uncertainty for short-span Mean Sea Level observations relative to a long-term reference epoch. This report was produced by the Australian Ocean Data Network and was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Reconciling Chart Datum (CD) and Australian Height Datum (AHD) for seamless coastal mapping.
• Calculating uncertainty metrics for short-term Mean Sea Level (MSL) observations against a long-term reference.
• Developing methodologies to define the intertidal zone using High and Low Astronomical Tide (HAT/LAT) planes.
• Aiding the creation of an ellipsoidal MSL surface with associated uncertainty estimates for satellite data integration.

Strengths

• Report provides a specific methodology for a defined geospatial problem: datum reconciliation.
• Focuses on calculating uncertainty, a critical component for scientific and engineering applications.
• Explicitly addresses the integration of disparate datasets (terrestrial AHD and marine CD/LAT).

Limitations

• Methodologies for computing uncertainties of Lowest Astronomical Tide (LAT) and Highest Astronomical Tide (HAT) were not developed as originally planned.
• The underlying data (rows, columns, sample size) supporting the methodology is not provided with the report.
• The report is in HTML format, not a directly analyzable dataset like CSV or GeoJSON.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network, from CRC-SI Project 114.

Collection Method

Research report presenting a developed methodology for datum reconciliation and uncertainty calculation.

Freshness

Last updated in April 2026, indicating recent maintenance.

Geography

Australia, specifically coastal and marine areas.