Lee Shoemaker

I am a bathymetry data manager at CIRES, supporting NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and co-located International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) Data Centre for Digital Bathymetry (DCDB). Bathymetry is the science of measuring and mapping the depth and topography of the ocean floor.

My primary work supports the IHO DCDB Crowdsourced Bathymetry (CSB) initiative. CSB is the collection and sharing of depth measurements from vessels, using standard navigation instruments, while engaged in routine maritime operations. My role includes recruitment of trusted nodes, to facilitate increased data inputs for the CSB archive. I participate on IHO CSB work item teams, collaborating with international partners to overcome technical challenges and CSB initiative efforts, specifically with integrations with the DCDB. As an emerging citizen-science-based initiative, CSB data have applications including early identification of hazards to navigation, monitoring areas of high hydrodynamic change, and informing national hydrographic offices about potential areas requiring full coverage hydrographic survey prioritization, without need for costly deployments of vessels and crews. A focus of our development work includes expansion and simplification of access to standardized file-based metadata, which can enable automated algorithms for correction of water levels, tides, vessel drafts, and other normalization protocols, improving the quality and usability of CSB data.

Additionally, I provide technical support for the management, assimilation, quality assurance, storage, and archival of hydrographic, bathymetric, and acoustic imagery data received at NCEI for the NOAA National Ocean Service (NOS) hydrographic survey database. As a technical representative for Hydrographic Surveys Division (HSD) at NCEI, I provide timely archival services for NOS Office of Coast Survey hydrographic data as the final step in the acquisition-to-archive process, and advocate for current and future technical needs for hydrographic survey data on behalf of HSD. I primarily coordinate with NOS on the development of data management code and procedures for the databases. I additionally provide assistance to all users of the databases, including government, commercial, general public, and academia. We are currently investigating and testing the latest cloud-based technologies for survey data management, seeking solutions on how to efficiently serve "big data" to enable constituent research and applications, and participating in the development of new product applications as acoustic sensors and technologies mature and improve. One of our focus areas is the expansion of FAIR data principles relative to this large-volume dataset, and how best we can expose the data to users in a way that is relevant and easily-accessible by both human users and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms.