Evaluation of the Accuracy of Bathymetry on the Nearshore Coastlines of Western Korea from Satellite Altimetry, Multi-Beam, and Airborne Bathymetric LiDAR

Bathymetric mapping is traditionally implemented using shipborne single-beam, multi-beam, and side-scan sonar sensors. Procuring bathymetric data near coastlines using shipborne sensors is difficult, however, this type of data is important for maritime safety, marine territory management, climate change monitoring, and disaster preparedness. In recent years, the bathymetric light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technique has been tried to get seamless geospatial data from land to submarine topography. This paper evaluated the accuracy of bathymetry generated near coastlines from satellite altimetry-derived gravity anomalies and multi-beam bathymetry using a tuning density contrast of 5000 kg/m³ determined by the gravity-geologic method. Comparing with the predicted bathymetry of using only multi-beam depth data, 78% root mean square error from both multi-beam and airborne bathymetric LiDAR was improved in shallow waters of nearshore coastlines of the western Korea. As a result, the satellite-derived bathymetry estimated from the multi-beam and the airborne bathymetric LiDAR was enhanced to the accuracy of about 0.2 m.