A number of people have asked what the position is with the data submitted to TeamSurv, who owns it, is it Open Source and so on. This is something we’ve had a long debate about internally, as we want to be able to give back as much to the marine community as possible, especially to those who log data for us, but we also need to be able to operate the project. Even though we are currently partially funded by the EU, the partners have all made a significant investment in time and money beyond what is covered by the grant to get to where we are now, and there will be significant ongoing costs which have to be met.

On the face of it, what you see of TeamSurv is simple: people log data and upload it to the web site, where it is displayed both as the raw logged data and (any day now) as the corrected data. But behind the scenes there is a lot more going on, which I will briefly outline here. Some of these things are in development, so they won’t be visible on the public web site just yet, but they will appear in due course:

• Development of software and hardware based data loggers, and cost of manufacture of the hardware loggers, which we supply on free loan to our loggers
• Sourcing and licencing of data to enable us to make the necessary corrections to the logged data, e.g. tide prediction coefficients, sea level data, sea temperature and salinity data to correct for variations of the speed of sound
• Assessing the accuracy of GPS receivers and depth sounders, so we know how accurate the incoming data is likely to be
• Developing and implementing algorithms to filter out bad data, and correct the incoming data for transducer depth and location, tides, sea level, speed of sound, and so on
• Work on assessing the effect of the boat’s motion, such as heel/rolling, heave and pitch, and the effect this has on accuracy, e.g. analysing vessel motion models and logged wave data
• Developing algorithms to combine the logged data, and so enhancing its accuracy
• Map production will always be a process with manual input as well as the use of computers

In addition to all of this, there are the obvious tasks of running the servers, building the database, web site and code, and recruiting and supporting the loggers.

 So what do I get out of it, you may be asking yourself. Well, all visitors to the web site will be able to view the data online. If you are providing data to TeamSurv as a logger, then you will also be able to access the data in other formats, for example as a printable chart, or as an S-57 file that you can download and use in your chart plotter, and we are also looking to add additional features to the web site to make it more attractive to you – fill in our questionnaire to tell us what you would like to see here. Also, of course, you own the copyright on the data you log; by uploading it you licence us to use it, and other users of the site to view it.

To cover our costs, we are looking at a number of avenues. One is providing services and consultancy to those wanting to use crowd sourced surveying techniques – ports, marinas, harbour authorities, offshore engineers and so on. Another is licencing the processed data for commercial use, so electronic or paper charts may incorporate some of our data in conjunction with data from other sources, or commercial users may incorporate our data into their internal software and systems.

Some people have asked why we don’t make everything free and open source, like with OpenStreetMap (OSM), where anyone can download the data, database, code and whatever else they may want, and do whatever they want with it. The commercial model for OSM  is that the founders have a separate company, CloudMade, that sells software, services and consultancy on top of OSM. OSM’s maps are created by crowdsourcing volunteers, and volunteers also write and maintain the software, database and web site. We looked at this, but decided not to go this route, because of two significant differences. First, the marine sector is a lot smaller than land mapping, so the opportunities for commercial exploitation are a lot fewer, and the available budgets much lower. Secondly, we have more costs and an ongoing need for data processing and quality control. OSM uses log files and inputs annotated by users, that don’t need a significant amount of processing, unlike the depth data, and also they are not supplying any free hardware with which to log the data, as many GPS units and mobile phones have this capability already. If you follow this link wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Water_Depth you can see what OSM’s approach is to bathymetric data, and I hope you’ll agree that we are taking things quite a lot further than that.

As I hope you can see from the above, we are trying to find the balance point between giving back as much as possible to those supporting TeamSurv, and particularly those doing the data logging, whilst making sure that we also have the resources to keep the project up and running, and producing high quality results for all to use.