ESTIMATION METHOD AND PROGRAM OF MARINE MINERAL RESOURCE EXPOSURE RATE

To provide a technology which makes it easy to efficiently and highly reliably evaluate marine mineral resources that can exist over the whole sea floor in a wide range.SOLUTION: An estimation method of a marine resource exposure rate includes the steps of: extracting arbitrary range data corresponding to an arbitrary range sea floor S1 from sea floor geometry feature quantity data and backscatter intensity data which can be obtained by scanning a sea floor with underwater acoustic equipment; deriving an actual measurement exposure rate showing a rate of marine mineral resources exposed in a partial range sea floor surface S11 from sea floor imaging data obtained by photographing the partial range sea floor surface S11 of the arbitrary range sea floor S1; and deriving an estimated exposure rate of the marine mineral resources on the arbitrary range sea floor S1. The step of deriving the estimated exposure rate performs a multivariate analysis with the arbitrary range data as an explanatory variable and with the actual measurement exposure rate as an objective variable, and performs operation associating the explanatory variable and the objective variable with each other, so as to derive an estimated exposure rate.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 2 【課題】広範囲の海底全体に亘って存在し得る海洋鉱物資源を効率良く高い信頼度で評価し易くすることが可能な技術を提供する。【解決手段】海底を水中音響機器により走査して得ることが可能な海底地形特徴量データおよび後方散乱強度データから、任意範囲海底Ｓ１に対応する任意範囲データを抽出する工程と、任意範囲海底Ｓ１のうち一部範囲海底表面Ｓ１１を水中カメラで撮影して得た海底撮像データから、当該一部範囲海底表面Ｓ１１において露出している海洋鉱物資源の割合を示す実測露出率を導出する工程と、任意範囲海底Ｓ１における海洋鉱物資源の推定露出率を導出する工程と、を行う。推定露出率を導出する工程では、前記任意範囲データを説明変数とし前記実測露出率を目的変数とする多変量解析を実施して、当該説明変数および当該目的変数を互いに対応付ける演算を行うことにより推定露出率を導出する。【選択図】図２