CHS is a world leader in the adoption of hydrographic survey technology, as well as in research and development. With responsibility for charting the world's longest coastline (243,792 kilometres) as well as 6.55 million square kilometres of continental shelf and territorial waters (second largest in the world), including extensive inland waterways such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, CHS maintains a world-record inventory of more than 1,000 published charts. As such, the organization was an early adopter of single-beam sonar, radio-navigation positioning systems, and computer processing and storage.