Generation and Provision of Ship's Master Track Data and Metadata for Standardized Access

摘要

This thesis deals with the navigation tracks of the Research Vessel Polarstern and it provides a software application for statistical analysis of these tracks.ududThe scope of this program follows two requirements. Firstly the program provides an assessment functionality for post processing of old tracks of R/V Polarstern to include all these tracks in long term storage and archiving system of AWI, the PANGAEA network. Secondly, it provides an online assessment tool to analyze the navigation information onboard the vessel in real time.ududThe software application has been developed using Borland C++ Builder 6 environment under Windows 7 operating system. The numeric functions of this application are following ANSI standard of C++ programming language, and thus it could be implemented in any developing environments using this standard.ududA full description of the navigation systems onboard the R/V Polarstern has been reviewed to investigate how the possible connections and relations between different sensors act, to understand how the cruise track is produced and to find appropriate analysis methods. ududIn particular, a statistical method is introduced for analyzing the navigational data of the vessel from different sources onboard. This method consists of several tests for detecting and identifying the outliers in the data. It follows a decision based filter that keeps the original data if it successfully passes the outlier tests. In addition, the filter replaces the outliers with appropriate solutions that are calculated using different routines such as transformation from different devices as well as interpolation and extrapolation procedures. This method provokes smoothing of the original data as well.ududAs results of the online and the offline mode, the final product is a file, called “Master track”, which consists of seven columns. These columns are: the date and time of the records with one second interval, the evaluated position of the vessel given in geographical coordinates, the heading of the ship, the roll and pitch and finally a quality number that indicates the precision of the position. In addition a generalized version of the Master track is provided applying Ramer–Douglas–Peucker algorithm. ududAt the end of this work some results are presented to show the improvements that have been achieved using the application. A sample Master track and the corresponding generalized track were finally published in PANGAEA. ud