The 13th Annual Conference-Workshop on Hydrography HYPACK 2017 took place in National University “Odessa Maritime Academy” on November 1-3, 2017. The conference was held with the support of the State Hydrography and NU ”OMA”.

The conference aimed at supporting users of the HYPACK® Max software in Ukraine as well as conducting master classes to solve the main tasks of hydrographic surveying. The conference was held by Boris Schulze, HYPACK Coordinator in Europe, Africa and the Middle East as well as Ivan Izaak, HYPACK Technical Support Officer.

This software package is designed to perform almost all hydrographic work, including the survey planning process, the survey itself, the output of the final products such as printed map-boards, the export of data in GIS format (DXF, DGN, etc.), as well as calculating volumes during dredging operations. This software package allows to perform a number of surveys, namely: traditional measurements with a single beam echosounder, side-scan sonar survey, planar survey of a multi-beam echolocation complex, bottom sediment research by means of a bottom profilograph, magnetometers, etc. In addition, the product has become increasingly popular among the other hydrographs all over the world.

Patrick Sanders, the president of HYPACK Inc., founded the company to create a software product for providing hydrographic surveys carried out by the US government agencies. The HYPACK® software package debuted at the IEEE / OES Oceanographic Conference in Halifax in 1987. Today, there are over 10,000 users of this program, including the US Army Corps of Engineers, NOAA, Hydrographic Services of Canada, the United Kingdom, France, India, Bangladesh, China, Japan, the Philippines, and others.
In 1993, the company began to conduct conferences for users. This year about 40 people took part in the conference, including employees of State Institution “State Hydrography”, NU “OMA”, “Delta Lotsman”, OMTP, Marine Register, Antares Scientific and Production Center, NIBULON, etc.