How does an organization overcome the problems surrounding the incorporation of potentially useful content from legacy field sheets and chart overlays into nautical chart products? Generally with old maps, there are some obvious problems to the integration of this type of information.

'Old data', as such, may simply not be up to today's standards. Perhaps there was no reference made to which horizontal coordinate system is used on old maps. Maybe there are very few survey control points, and little or no man-made features to help in the registration process. All in all, incorporating legacy data can be a very challenging task.

Common challenges to registering this type of data may be:

• Variable condition of source materials
• Scale, resolution and size of datasets
• Differing content of unregistered data
• Variations in quality of legacy map content
• Potential lack of suitable control points

Through the use of CARIS software, unregistered datasets can be transformed to best fit a chosen, real-world coordinate system, and used to  subsequently integrate the data to support chart production and other uses. CARIS BASE Editor™ and CARIS Hydrographic Production Database™ (HPD) are software solutions which contain the framework necessary to help recover the best results possible when facing this type of scenario.

To learn more about solutions to support the recovery of legacy data into your hydrographic workflow please contact info@caris.com.