Competencies

New hydrospatial specialist competencies

Katie Holt, Development Manager

CICES working group completes major revision of the hydrographic surveying competencies

AN extensive review of the CICES specialist competencies for hydrographic surveying has been completed, resulting in a new set of hydrospatial competencies. The working group was led by William Kelly, programme convenor and lecturer in geospatial science at the University of Glasgow. The purpose of the review was to reflect:

• Current and future industry practice in the hydro/marine sector e.g., remote and autonomous operations. 
• The wider scope of ‘hydrographic’ activities as relevant to CICES members (and potential members) – from in-land waterways to coastal zones and offshore operations.
• Recent updates in CICES general and core geospatial engineering competencies – to remove duplication of certain items. 
• The importance of the surveyor’s role in hydrographic data management and in national marine spatial data infrastructures.

Why has the name been changed? And what is hydrospatial?

It was felt that the previous name ‘hydrographic surveying’ did not adequately describe the range of activities that members, and future members, of CICES are involved in. Many of these surveyors will probably not consider themselves to be the traditional hydrographic surveyor, performing a bathymetric survey to create a chart for safety of navigation purposes, but may still be surveying in or near the water environment, for engineering applications. The challenge then is what term to use.

The Engineering Council and its professional engineering institutions (of which CICES is one) have limited examples of potentially relevant terms. The terms marine, maritime or hydrography are used to describe some activities that are included within, or adjacent to, the CICES remit. Other professional surveying institutions still use hydrographic surveying.

The term marine geospatial, an all-encompassing term for the sector and increasingly used by the Geospatial Commission and the Hydrographic Office, was considered. When talking about surveying specifically within the marine environment however there is a possible confusion with marine surveyor – an unrelated role. Marine also technically refers to saltwater bodies so may not be seen to be inclusive of members working in freshwater environments.

This brings us to hydrospatial – the hydro, or water component of geospatial – a term that has seen increased discussion in the past few years in the hydrographic sector and used to cover the rapid expansion in how hydro-related data are captured, shared, and used in society¹ ; beyond the core focus of safety of navigation.

Hydrospatial therefore was selected as a more inclusive, all-encompassing term for this CICES geospatial engineering specialism.

Working group for hydrospatial competencies

William Kelly, University of Glasgow (chair)
Andy Waddington, Hexagon AB
Anthony Pritchard, Storm Geomatics
Stuart Leakey, Port of London Authority
Eric Primeau, British Petroleum
Ed Danson, (CICES past president) self-employed
Sandy Powell, Vision

With thanks to all other member contributors 

The new hydrospatial competencies

The new competencies have been organised into four categories:

• Hydrospatial surveys – required standards for a variety of survey operations with an expectation that members will be stronger in some areas but still have knowledge and awareness of others.
• Hydrospatial science – core, fundamental theory, required by civil engineering surveyors operating in the hydrospatial domain. These are applicable (to varying degrees) to most types of survey, vehicle, and water depth.
• Surveying operations – modern surveying technologies and practice, practical aspects of planning and executing surveys and projects.
• Charts, models and data visualisations – covers the traditional hydrographic chart as well as more applied, engineering outputs e.g. engineering/field drawings, cross-sections, DTMs etc.

Katie Holt, Development Manager

kholt@cices.org

1 https://www.hydro-international.com/content/article/what-is-hydrospatial