Although internet access services have become available on board in recent years, regular high-speed communications are still challenging, necessitating that previously acquired data be brought to the ship on media. We have developed a highly mobile database system to effectively utilize various data, allowing observation plans to be made and modified on board. The system allows users to manipulate the data in the same environment as on land and easily integrates the obtained survey data into the database on land after the cruise. Furthermore, we have implemented a simple visualization tool, a database including metadata, and a user interface that makes it easy to utilize any data. For evaluation of the system, the developed database and previously acquired data were installed on a ship and adapted to search for promising areas of submarine hydrothermal deposits. During the research cruise, we conducted various types of data acquisitions with the database for a candidate mining area that had been pre-surveyed. Finally, high-quality seafloor topographic and self-potential data were obtained by an AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle), enabling us to narrow down promising areas from an initial analysis on board.

Acoustic positioning, a common method used for determining the position of underwater objects such as submersibles and robots, involves positional error. The RMSH (root mean square of horizontal distance from a seafloor reference point) was on the order of tens of meters when the target was grounded on the seafloor. Normalized values by the water depth at all diving events were almost within approximately 0.8 %, and within approximately 0.5 % after exclusion of outliers. In case for an acoustic mapping using a moving vehicle, remember the error mentioned above from acoustic positioning system, and also an error from inertial navigation system and position deviations caused by "positioning corrections" due to the data processing process. These positioning errors probably affect the compilation of multiple data sets and their secondary use in other analyses. Since the acoustic positioning data becomes used wide, the primary analysts using acoustic data would be required to keep a record of the errors quantitatively as possible for secondary users.