Australian sea-floor survey data, with images and expert annotations

Abstract

This Australian benthic data set (BENTHOZ-2015) consists of an expert-annotated set of georeferenced benthic images and associated sensor data, captured by an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) around Australia. This type of data is of interest to marine scientists studying benthic habitats and organisms. AUVs collect georeferenced images over an area with consistent illumination and altitude, and make it possible to generate broad scale, photo-realistic 3D maps. Marine scientists then typically spend several minutes on each of thousands of images, labeling substratum type and biota at a subset of points. Labels from four Australian research groups were combined using the CATAMI classification scheme, a hierarchical classification scheme based on taxonomy and morphology for scoring marine imagery. This data set consists of 407,968 expert labeled points from around the Australian coast, with associated images, geolocation and other sensor data. The robotic surveys that collected this data form part of Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) ongoing benthic monitoring program. There is reuse potential in marine science, robotics, and computer vision research.