The Australian Hydrographic Service (AHS) officially adopted the Hydrographic Transfer Format (HTF) in February 2000.  HTF is now the preferred distribution format for AHS sounding data and will be used by all Hydrographic Surveying Force (HSF) Units to render digital sounding data to the AHS as well as to exchange data between HSF Units.

The AHS is encouraging the use of HTF by other hydrographic agencies wishing to render source survey data to the AHS.

The international format for the exchange of hydrographic charting data is International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) S57.  The AHS will now be working towards ensuring that HTF is considered as the basis for a similar standard for the exchange of hydrographic survey data.

HTF is acknowledged as a particularly versatile format since it enables more than just sounding data exchange.  One feature of HTF is its ability to capture and preserve metadata associated with a survey.  This can include polygonised sheet or chart boundaries, and survey boundaries as well as vectorised soundings.

The current version of HTF is Technical Specification Version 2.02 .