INSS INFOMAR Seabed Survey Sound Velocity Profile

The integrated Mapping for the Sustainable Development of Ireland’s Marine Resource (INFOMAR) programme is a joint venture between the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) and the Marine Institute (MI). The programme is the successor to the Irish National Seabed Survey (INSS) and concentrates on creating integrated mapping products related to the seabed. A sound velocity profile shows the speed of sound in water at different vertical levels. It has two general representations:

1. tabular form, with pairs of columns corresponding to ocean depth and the speed of sound at that depth, respectively.
2. a plot of the speed of sound in the ocean as a function of depth, where the vertical axis corresponds to the depth and the horizontal axis corresponds to the sound speed. By convention, the horizontal axis is placed at the top of the plot, and the vertical axis is labeled with values which increase from top to bottom, set-up reproducing visually the ocean from its surface Downward.

A Sound Velocity Profile (SVP) is a measurement of the speed of sound in water. SVP data is collected during multi-beam Surveying for calibration purposes to ground-truth the bathymetric and Backscatter data collection.

Data for SVP point locations and associated attribute values is generated from SVP Profiler during survey. Data includes XY Longitude Latitude, Start SVP, End SVP, Maximum depth, Data Quality and Comments, SVP Instrument Name and Survey Leg name.