Kongsberg joins global ocean floor mapping project

Kongsberg Maritime has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project to support the global initiative to produce the complete map of the ocean floor.

Under the terms of the agreement, the two parties will work together to advance understanding of ocean bathymetry.

“As an organisation committed to offering the best marine technology, we are delighted to support Seabed 2030 in its mission of producing the definitive map of the seafloor,” said Bjørn Jalving, senior vice president for Technology Kongsberg Maritime.

“We will specifically develop freely available functions for Kongsberg Maritime multibeam echo sounders, single beam echo sounders and AUVs that ease the process of contributing bathymetric data to the Seabed 2030 data centres.”

The development will be collaborative with the University of New Hampshire and Stockholm University.

Seabed 2030 is a collaborative project between The Nippon Foundation and GEBCO to inspire the complete mapping of the world’s ocean by 2030, and to compile all bathymetric data into the freely available GEBCO Ocean Map.

GEBCO is a joint project of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), and is the only organization with a mandate to map the entire ocean floor.