Quality assurance

Quality references in the Abstract and/or Lineage, although the ISO19115 Data quality elements within (MD_DataQuality) can also be used to document precision and accuracy more fully.

Quality assurance on L2 data using the MATE plugin in QAX is mandatory.

QAX is an open-source project, jointly steered by AusSeabed, the United States of America National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Coast Survey (NOAA OCS), and the University of New Hampshire’s Centre for Coastal and Ocean Mapping (UNH CCOM). QAX version 1.0 is available on the AusSeabed GitHub (https://github.com/ausseabed/qax/releases ).

QAX facilitates quality assurance (QA) of processed multibeam echo sounder (MBES) L2 data (in gsf format). It provides an efficient workflow for checking MBES data. The tool standardises QA outputs and assists the technician to perform a robust QA of data.

This assessment must be performed within data structure submitted to AusSeabed. This includes processed L2 MBES and optional ancillary data such SVP, Navigation or Trueheave data that used to produce L2 data. The qajson file and screen capture of the summary from QAX (Fig. 1) are required along with L2 data on submission to AusSeabed.

Figure 1. An example of screen capture of the result summary from QAX.

At a minimum, the Bathymetry Available and Backscatter Available checks need to score a pass even if other checks result in fail or have warnings. The inclusion of ancillary data is optional because we expect that all required ancillary data have been already applied to the L2 MBES data supplied.