Top-down analysis

Robust mapping of habitats and marine landscapes on the regional to medium scale

Work package WP1 involves:

• Development of objective classification methods for deep marine landscapes
• Evaluation of different automated image segmentation techniques for (AUV/ROV-based) multibeam and sidescan sonar data
• Performance assessment through replicate surveys
• Development of a confidence assessment methodology

Results:

• Objective automated classification technique for marine landscape mapping in complex deep-sea environment, including confidence assessment
  • published in Marine Geology (Ismail et al., 2015)
  • Application for mega-MPA characterisation published in Nature Scientific Reports (Hogg et al., 2016)
  • Summarised in handy 2-page factsheet
• New toolbox for the ArcGIS 10.x software to support automated image segmentation. Also summarised in a 2-page factsheet