Advancing multibeam technology allows us to map the seafloor better than ever before, and we have plenty of stunning bathymetry to show for it. Yet the ever-increasing data volume presents some challenges during both quality review and in its generalization to nautical chart scale. The tools under this research theme aim to identify and address specific inefficiencies in these processes by shifting manually-intensive efforts toward automation for a faster, easier review. With more timely feedback to field parties, these tools were a catalyst for the newly-implemented Rapid Survey Assessment.

Each of the algorithms presented in the following sub-sections has a wide margin of improvements with the ongoing development, and new algorithms will be added to the existing two tools as needed. Ultimately, high quality surveys applied to the chart in a more timely fashion is the goal; how well the current workflow will be improved by the QC Tools algorithms is the metric by which these tools will be judged.

QC Tools has inspired the development of QAX.