David Crossman - Discover UMap – A free QGIS Plugin for effortless Visualisation of bathymetric data

To support coastal communities in collecting and using bathymetric data in the nearshore areas they depend on for travel, hunting, and fishing, the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) launched its Community Hydrography Program in 2022. As a part of that ongoing program CHS commissioned IIC Technologies to develop a Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS) Extension to Help Create Bathymetric Community Maps. The CHS desired to provide these communities, particularly those in the remote northern areas of Canada, with the ability to create ‘Community Maps/charts’ using their own data in areas where no large-scale charting was available. The objective of the extension is to greatly streamline the processing and visualisation of bathymetric data collected by the public for their own purposes and to encourage bathymetric data gathering in these remote areas ultimately improving safety of navigation.

The UMap Plugin that has been developed, allows any user to drag and drop existing bathymetric data, newly collected bathymetry from simple bathy data loggers and other source information into a tool that automatically interprets and visualises all supplied inputs. Although not an official chart, the system automatically generates a ‘chart-like’ community map product that includes colour-coded depth areas, depth contours and a selection of soundings making understanding of local bathymetry truly effortless.
This free plug-in is already available for public use in the QGIS repository under IIC Technologies (https://github.com/umap-iic/UMap) and, although it was commissioned by the CHS for use in Canada, it can be utilised anywhere in the world as long as there is a suitable vector shoreline and bathymetric data for the area of interest.

The tool is super-easy to use (please watch the short uTube clip for a demonstration    • UMap Teaser  ) and the public are encouraged to utilise it in their areas of interest.

An excellent article on the trial undertaken on UMap by CHS has just been released in the IHR , and makes for very good reading if you want to know more about the communities it was developed for and how they will benefit from its use (see below).