Oceanscience Z-Boat 1800 Survey Boats Delivered to Russia

The Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring of Russia (Roshydromet) has embarked on a widespread program of modernization of its environmental instrumentation and infrastructure.

Partly funded by the World Bank, the project will result in an enormous improvement in the ability of the organization to monitor surface water hydrology and hydrography. As part of the project, an initial fleet of 15 Oceanscience Z-Boat 1800 remotely-operated hydrographic survey boats has been delivered to Russia through Oceanscience’s exclusive project partner, INFAX Inc. The Z-Boat specified for Roshydromet is among the highest performance options available, with on-board instruments including the latest Teledyne RD Instruments’ River Ray acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) for river water velocity and discharge measurement, a single beam 200kHz echosounder, and GNSS antenna. All data are available on the shore control station in real time courtesy of a multichannel radio link with navigation and acquisition software including RD Instruments’ WinRiver ADCP package and Eye4Software Hydromagic for bathymetric mapping.

The Z-Boat fleet has been dispatched to all corners of the country, from St Petersburg to Siberia to Vladivostok however each boat and instrument package is part of a consistent “mobile station” approach where survey teams all have identical vehicles and monitoring equipment. With the remotely-operated boat in their vehicle, technicians can perform measurements in more locations with fewer restrictions, but not sacrifice their data quality. Roshydromet acceptance testing on the Razdolnaya River in the far east region generated enthusiasm, with 300m simultaneous geo-referenced ADCP velocity and 200kHz bathymetry sections across the river conducted in some pretty unpleasant conditions.

“The Roshydromet operators have gone from having a the most basic range of monitoring tools to the most advanced in one step”, according to Naum Valler of INFAX who introduced the Oceanscience remotely-operated boat to Russia; “Other countries with well developed hydrological monitoring networks often see the remote boat as an ancillary tool, whereas with Roshydromet the approach was different. We viewed the Z-Boat option as the most convenient and flexible approach for small to medium sized river hydrologic surveying from the start so it was placed at the core of the project. The most obvious benefits include getting people away from potentially dangerous survey situations and being able to choose a survey site based on data quality and not simply access restructions whether it be for launching a manned boat into a river or lake or working off a bridge.”

[mappress]

Press Release, January 13, 2014