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Empirically Determined Passenger Ferry Navigable Routes within Lagos Lagoon
Abstract
Hydrographic surveys define shorelines and depths of lakes, streams, oceans, reservoirs, and other bodies of water. Sea surveying is associated with port and offshore industries and the marine environment, including measurements and marine investigations made by ship-borne personnel. In addition, accurate measurement and modelling of hydrographic information is important to control waterways boat services with existing roadway transportation services. This paper attempts an empirical analysis of hydrographic data to simulate waterway navigable route within Lagos Lagoon with a minimum under-keel clearance that must be maintained by vessel transiting a port as well as berthing. The field investigation was conducted between September 2015 and March 2016 to determine river bed topography with the deployment of DGPS receivers, Single beam SDE 28S echo sounder, speed boat, tidal observation and reduction. Hypack 2008 and Arc GIS software was used for data sorting, extraction and processing. It was observed that depth within the project area ranges between 0.0m to 14.82m when referred to the Lagos datum. Furthermore, waterway navigable chart was developed based on prevailing river bed topography along the study corridors as well as passenger ferry draught constraint. From this study, derived depths were analysed in form of graphs and charts that provides a suitable framework to support ferry transportation services within Lagos Lagoon as a complimentary mode to the dominantly depended road transportation services. Therefore, periodic hydrographic survey of the navigable routes is recommended specifically to identify possible channel accretion.
Keywords: Navigable routes, hydrographic information, empirical analysis, under-keel clearance, river bed, topography