Wellington, New Zealand
4-6 March 2019

The registration deadline is February 8th, 2019. Late registrations may be accepted.

For more information please email Geoffroy Lamarche, Head South and West Pacific Centre at pacific@seabed2030.org (please use “Seabed2030 SaWPaC RMC Meeting” in the subject line).

Seabed 2030 is a collaborative project between GEBCO and the Nippon Foundation with the aim of facilitating the complete mapping of the ocean floor by the year 2030.

Regional Data Assembly and Coordination Centers (RDACC) have been established with the task of identifying existing data from their assigned regions and compiling these into regional gridded bathymetric datasets. The regional centers will work to encourage and improve coordination between mapping expeditions in their regions. They will also develop protocols for data collection and common software and other tools needed to assemble and attribute appropriate metadata as they assimilate regional grids using standardized techniques.

The Seabed 2030 South and West Pacific Centre (SaWPaC) is responsible for c. 124M km2 of ocean from the west coast of South America to east coast of Australia and north to Japan, Korea and China. It includes the Exclusive Economic Zones of 39 countries as well as a large region “Beyond National Jurisdiction”.

The centre is hosted at NIWA in New Zealand and coordinated by a team from NIWA, GNS Science and Land Information New Zealand (LINZ).

Meeting objectives

  • Establish a Regional Mapping Committee consisting of representatives from relevant countries and organizations
  • Identify sources of bathymetric data
  • Discuss methods and protocols of data sharing, and management
  • Identify upcoming mapping expeditions
  • Discuss all matters related to the efficient and smooth operation of the project

Preliminary agenda

Day 1: Introduction: Seabed 2030: Mission, organization and technical considerations Presentations from participants (15 min per region including questions):

  • New sources of bathymetric data
  • Expedition coordination and opportunities
  • New Approaches of acquiring bathymetry that may benefit the Seabed 2030 project

We invite all to contribute with presentations on the topics above. At the registration link there will be a submission form for proposed presentations. Both oral presentations and posters will be welcomed. We envision short (10-15 min, depending on how many) presentations. We encourage all to be very specific on points such as: data distribution, quality, potential data restrictions, data status. We will organise a dinner in Wellington for the RMC participants

Day 2: The day will focus on developing an action plan. The work will be organized around break-out groups given the following task:

  • Define specific goals and time table
  • Identify resources (who are able to contribute, distribution of workload)
  • Develop a specific list of data sets from day 1
  • Develop a specific list of planned mapping expeditions
  • Initialize data transfers

Day 3: half-day. Summary and conclusions.

For more information please email Geoffroy Lamarche, Head South and West Pacific Centre at pacific@seabed2030.org (please use “Seabed2030 SaWPaC RMC Meeting” in the subject line). The registration deadline is February 8th, 2019.

Meeting Summary

View the workshop summary report for an overview of the meeting and key outcomes.

The presentations given at the meeting can also be viewed and downloaded.

1st Circular Letter - English

Workshop Agenda

Summary report