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Back to SSG 04
Electronic charts should make
all the difference
For obvious reasons all vessels are required to carry charts covering the area of operation. Today it is hard to imagine navigation without electronic aids, but in the days of only inaccurate paper charts vessels grounded in bad weather.
Nowadays we do it more in style, aided by vast arrays of electronic gadgetry, ships are still wrecked because of bad navigation. The age-old art of finding the way from one place to another is called navigation. Until the 20th century, the term referred mainly to guiding ships across the seas. Indeed, the word “navigate” comes from the Latin “navis” (meaning “ship”) and “agere” (meaning “to move or direct”).
The objective when using modern navigational aids – and the electronic charts are among the more important – remains to get a ship safely from loadings to discharge port.
Until fairly recently, charts were a national responsibility, often organised through Government bodies. The exception was the Admiralty Charts, which was the first true international distribution of charts or sea maps. Today official paper charts are provided by many Government bodies, but made generally available through a network of agents.
Charts in literature
The business of electronic charts is more complicated, but generally such charts are available for different sources. In Norway Primar Stavanger, which is part of the Norwegian Hydrographic Service, provides electronic charts online covering most sea areas of the world. But the paper charts remain the official basis for navigation onboard, regardless of the type of electronic chart used.
Admiralty Charts was the one and only aid available, except for celestial navigation. Sometimes the charts were blamed for groundings, like in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Wrecker: “Whiskey and encouraged by the eagerness of the bystanders, that gentleman was now rehearsing the history of his misfortune. It was but scraps that reached me: how he ‘filled her on the starboard tack’, and how ‘it came up sudden out of the nor’nor’west’, and ‘there she was, high and dry’. Sometimes he would appeal to one of the men – ‘That was how it was, Jack?’ – and the man would reply, ‘That was the way of it, Captain Trent’. Lastly, he started a fresh tide of popular sympathy by enunciating the sentiment, ‘Damn all these Admiralty Charts, and that’s what I say!’”
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Two key people in the Norwegian Hydrographic Service (NHS). From left Rune Holst Johnsen, director of Primar Stavanger and Frode Klepsvik, director of NHS. |
Private or official
Charts issued by, or on the authority of, a Government authorized Hydrographic Office or other relevant Government institutions, are official and may be used to fulfil carriage requirements (provided they are kept up to date).
All other nautical charts are by definition not official and are often referred to as private charts. These charts are not accepted as the basis for navigation under the SOLAS convention and Hydrographic Offices do not take any responsibility for the accuracy or reliability of privately produced charts.
There are two kinds of official digital charts commonly available: Electronic Navigational Charts (ENC) and Raster Navigational Charts (RNC).
An ENC (Electronic Navigational Chart) is a database, standardized as to content, structure and format, issued for use with ECDlS (Electronic Chart Display and Information System) on the authority of Government authorized Hydrographic Offices (HOs).
It contains all chart information necessary for safe navigation and may contain supplementary information in addition to that contained in the paper chart (e.g. Sailing Directions), which may be considered necessary for safe navigation, according to Primar Stavanger.
ECDIS
IMO ECDIS performance standard states: “Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) means a navigation information system, which, with adequate back up arrangements, can be accepted as complying with the up to date chart required by regulation V/19 and V/27 of the 1974 Safety of Lives at Sea (SOLAS) Convention, by displaying selected information from a System Electronic Navigational Chart (SENC) with positional information from navigation sensors to assist the mariner in route planning and route monitoring, and by displaying additional navigation-related information if required”. (IMO Resolution A.817 [19].)
To ensure conformance with International Maritime Organisation (IMO) requirements, ECDIS must pass type approval and test procedures developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) based on IMO ECDIS Performance Standards and applying the HO requirements, S52 and S57 in particular.
//Petter Arentz
Latest update 18-10-2006 8:49
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No 18/2008
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No 17/2008
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2006