Garotes

Garotes is a cloud-based satellite-derived bathymetry (SDB) platform from Spascat Technologies that expands, completes or reconstructs partial bathymetric data for nearshore waters. Coastal seabed data is usually collected through costly dedicated survey campaigns, often only once a year, and sparse single-beam echo sounder tracks, incomplete multibeam surveys or outdated charts leave gaps in depth coverage.

Users upload an existing partial survey (a GeoTIFF or an array of sample points), draw their area of interest as a polygon and choose a cloud-free acquisition date, helped by automated cloud filtering. Garotes then applies a hybrid of empirical and machine-learning models to Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery at 10 m pixel resolution, using the user's measurements as calibration, to produce a continuous bathymetric surface reliable to about 14 m depth. The process also detects the land-water boundary, so the shoreline is delivered with the depth map. Imagery updates weekly. Results can be inspected in the browser, including a slice tool that compares reconstructed and original depth profiles, and downloaded as georeferenced GeoTIFF files for external GIS software.

Spascat names four uses: tracking seabed change after storms or dredging, supplying bathymetry for marine engineering such as port construction, pipeline and cable laying and offshore wind farm development, coastal zone management in the face of erosion and sea-level rise, and updating nautical charts. The platform was developed with support from ACCIÓ, is sold on a pay-per-credit model, and its results were validated with the Institut Cartogràfic i Geològic de Catalunya (ICGC) as a collaborating user; the product page also lists the Generalitat de Catalunya's Departament de Territori, Habitatge i Transició Ecològica as a validator.