7 / 2023-03-09 18:24:06

Dredge-Soft: A New User-Friendly Software for Processing Bathymetric Survey Data for Easy Dredging Operations

Dredging, Geospatial, Hydrographic Survey, Python, Computation, Visualization.

Dredging operations have been orchestrated in coastal regions across Nigeria with sparse reference to the quantum of material projected for excavation from the sea bed and also to the monitoring of the dredging progress for decades. This can be attributed majorly to ignorance and accessibility to the technological needs for these processes. The geospatial data produced from hydrographic survey activities on the water body is often processed using existing software packages, the majority of which are created or controlled by foreign corporations. These software products often have a range of limitations in addition to being prohibitively expensive and/or requiring arduous deployment processes. Hence, a zero-cost, user-friendly alternative is required to enable speedy, accurate, and comprehensible processing of field data in developing nations such as Nigeria. In view of these, this paper sets out to proffer a solution to the identified gap through the development of a user-friendly Python-based application, capable of processing geospatial data, primarily for volume calculations and 3D modelling of sea beds before, during, and after dredging operations. Dependencies such as Pandas, NumPy, Plotly, and Pyside6 were employed at different stages of the software development which includes computation, visualization, volume estimation, and GUI creation. The developed software performed excellently well when comparing its outputs to that of other existing expensive software packages.