The Hydrographic Brigade of Guangdong Maritime Safety Administration (abr. Guangdong MSA), former the A to N and hydrographic department and the habor survey brigade of Guangzhou Channel Bureau, Ministry of Communications came under the jurisdiction of Guangzhou Marine Safety Supervision Bureau, in January 1987, following the A to N and hydrographic department. In May 1988, the habor survey brigade was expanded to the present hydrographic brigade. Due to the reform of China's maritime organizations and functions in January 2000, Guangzhou Maritime Safety Supervision Bureau became today's Guangdong MSA and the hydrographic brigade, the Hydrographic Brigade of Guangdong MSA. The hydlrographic brigade is the biggest, in scale, of its kind in the South China, the only one unit with the top-grade prospecting and designing qualification certificate issued by the National Bureau of Surveying and Mapping as well as the only local unit qualified to publish the nautical charts. Equiped with advanced equipments in hands of skilled technicians, the brigade undertakes sounding, dredging survey, sounder scanning, marine positioning, hydrological survey, seabed topographic survey, editing and plotting maps, control survey, coastal topogaphic survey, etc. In August 1999, it has passed the authentifation for ISO-9000 Quality System.

Periodically, the brigade carry out the hydrographic surveying for more than twenty port channels and harbor basins in the coastal sea of the three provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan and publish the relevant nautical charts so as to guaranty navigation safety for boats and in ports. In cope with the development of the economy and the infrastructure in the South China coast, the brigade, the brigade takes part also in the prospecting and designing of local ports and channels and provides the navigation safety.

Since its estalishment, Guangdong brigade has imported some 35 millions Yuans of new equipments with the support of the Ministry of Communications. These modern equipments include single and dual frequency echo sounders and GPS receivers, infrared distancers, theodolites, levels, side-scan sonars, multibeam echo sounder, sub-bottom profilers, acoustic tracking systems, automatic plotter, work-stations of nautical charts, etc.

Guangdong brigade has now 151 employees, including 86 technical cadres, between them 3 senior engineers, 30 engineers and 53 technicians. It has 5 special surveying boats. Their skills covere different fields such as geodetic survey, engineering survey, mapping, geology, photoelectric instruments, computer softwares, radio-technology, electronic equipment maintenance, etc. Its technical persons mainly come from Wuhan University of Surveying and Mapping Technology, Jiaotong University, Nanjing Civil Engineering Institute, Wuhan Transport Science and Atechnology Unniversity and Zhengzhou Surveying and Mapping College of PLA, etc.

Address: 479 Xingang Road, Centre, Guangzhou, China