Synthesizing Bathymetry Data within a Community Dependent Basemap for Spatial Data Display in the Arctic Ocean

Abstract:

The Esri Ocean Basemap program, an extension of the Esri Community Maps program, grows and develops based on the participation of the scientific and GIS communities. Not only does the Ocean Basemap evolve from the authoritative data contributions, but user needs influence the direction of the program as well. With the eyes of the scientific and maritime community shifting northerly to the Arctic, it became obvious that both the scientific and GIS communities needed a more appropriate basemap to best accommodate and share their work. The Esri Ocean Basemap team began designing a new Ocean Basemap product to support work conducted in the Arctic Ocean. The team first complied the best available data sources and applicable community contributions. By leveraging commercial-off-the-shelf capabilities in the ArcGIS platform, the team converted datasets from a range of governmental, non-governmental and private entities into compatible formats and ensured a uniform data projection for all of the datasets. In addition, the team developed and applied automatic sorting rules to create a surface model for cartographic purposes using the ArcGIS for Maritime: Bathymetry solution. After determining a tiling scheme, the Ocean Basemap team officially published the Arctic Ocean Basemap. The Arctic Ocean Basemap provides the scientific and GIS communities with a WMTS-enabled, appropriately projected basemap to support their maps and applications.