Abstract:

The foot point of slope is the core limits of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles. According to the 76th article in United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (brief in UNCLOS) and related technical requirements of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, we discussed the method and technical process for the identification of the foot point of slope. In this paper, a quadratic simplified method based on the D-P algorithm and extreme points of second derivation was proposed by analyzing the terrain, slope, second derivation and the D-P profile synthetically. A quadratic derivative method was advanced also based on original and D-P profile. The original profile was simplified in 7 procedures and multiple decision methods were given such as the slope, depth, second derivation to the data, concavity, continuity and segmentation to the profile in order to identify the foot point of slope automatically. The underlying program was developed and result was coincided with the international commercial software for outer limits determination. The effectivity of the method had been verified by applying it to the real multibeam bathymetric data.

Key words: foot point of slope, D-P algorithm, quadratic fit, second derivation, auto-recognition