The Effect of the Density of Measurement Points Collected From a Multibeam Echosounder on the Selection of IDW Interpolation Points in the Process of Creating Seabed Models

The article presents the results of research on the effect of the density of measurement points (depth) from the multibeam echosounder (MBES) on the accuracy of the generated sea bottom models and the effect of this density of points on the optimal parameters of data interpolation using inverse distance weighting (IDW) interpolation. To carry out the above research, the existing standards related to hydrographic works were described, and then the difficulties in precise calculation of the accuracy of the created seabed models were presented. To solve the problem of assessing the accuracy of created seabed models, the author proposed a new method of preparing test data based on the author's virtual sea survey program. The presented approach enables the accurate calculation of errors that arise in the digital terrain model creation process based on measurement data, and thus, the study of the impact of selected transformation parameters on the accuracy of the generated models. Using this method, the author prepared a set of six sets of test data with different densities (referring them to existing measuring devices), and on their basis, calculated the effect of the density of measurement points on the accuracy of the generated models and the effect of the density of measurement points on the optimal parameters of the IDW transformation. When analyzing the results, the computation time was also considered, which may be crucial when selecting the parameters of the IDW transformation. A possible approach of hydrographic system operators when processing data files with different densities was also proposed. The presented research and results may be helpful in the practical processing of data from MBES during the sea survey.