Dr. V.V.L.N. SARMA Civil Hydrographic

Officer National Hydrographic Office DEHRADUN-248 001 vvlns@yahoo.co.uk

Electronic Charting Standards and Interoperability Issues in Marine GIS

GEO INTELLIGENCE INDIA, 14 JUNE 2013

Introduction .....

• Many initiatives, improvements, and path breaking inventions led the ‘global commons’ and the shipping industry to become silent contributors to the country’s growth.

• In the present era of increasing demand for safety, security, and protection of environment, waterborne transport is going to play a vital role in global economics and social requirements.

Source: AGCS Report, 2012

International seaborne trade – some facts

Source: AGCS Report, 2012

Source: AGCS Report, 2012

Source: AGCS Report, 2012

• In order to meet the primary objectives of marine safety, security, and protection of environment, International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and International Hydrographic Office (IHO) are continuously working on to develop standards for various maritime requirements, especially marine navigation.

• As a result, several international standards were developed which include but not limited to S-52, S-57, S-58, S-63 and the recent S-100.

IMO and IHO• International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and

International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO) regulate, coordinate and oversee the standardization of equipment, personnel and data required for maritime community.

• These are essential to safe guard the interests of the maritime operations and protecting the marine environment from disasters at sea due to collision and accidents to the ships.

What is S-57 standard ?• IHO Publication 57 (IHO S-57) is the IHO Transfer Standard for

Digital Hydrographic Data. The standard was formally adopted as an official IHO standard in 1992.

• Its purpose was for the exchange of digital hydrographic data between hydrographic offices, and for the distribution of hydrographic data to manufacturers, mariners and other data users (e.g., environmental management organizations).

• It was developed so that the transfer of all forms of hydrographic data would take place in a consistent and uniform manner.

• However, to date, S-57 has been used almost exclusively for encoding Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs) for use in Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems (ECDIS).

Present S-57 Users

Hydrographic Offices–Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs)

Other communities have S-57 based products

– Additional Military Layers (AML)– Marine Information Overlay (MIO)– Inland ENC, etc.

Confirmed in Production

Published ENCs

Global ENC Coverage

Captain Robert Ward, Director IHB

Indian ENCs - 263

ECDIS(ELECTRONIC CHART DISPLAY AND INFORMATION SYSTEM)

• ECDIS is a real time Geographic Information System (GIS) in marine with the ENC as a base.

• ECDIS is a superior quality dynamic display and decision support system

• It displays ENC, which is legal equivalent of paper chart issued by hydrographic offices

• Its automatic position tracking, safety features like various alarms, ability to set a safety contour and updating capability allows the navigator to concentrate on the navigational and ship management decisions.

ECDIS- Interfaces

Source: AGCS Report, 2012

Limitations in S-57 standard• S-57 has been used almost exclusively for

encoding Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs) for use in Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems (ECDIS).

• S-57 is not a contemporary standard that is widely accepted in the GIS domain.

• It has an inflexible maintenance regime. Freezing standards for lengthy periods is counter-productive.

Limitations in S-57 standard…..

• content and carrier (ISO 8211) combined • difficult to update / introduce new editions• lacks flexibility and ease of extension /

development• used almost exclusively for official nautical charts• requires specific tools to use in GIS

To overcome these limitations, in November 2000, the IHO approved a revision programme for S-57, that

resulted in a new framework geospatial standard called “S-100 – Universal Hydrographic Data Model” (Ed

1.0.0 - January 2010).

What is S-100 ?• S-100 is a Universal Hydrographic Data Model

adopted by the IHO on 1 January 2010, thereby becoming an active international standard.

• S-100 provides a contemporary hydrographic geospatial data standard that can support a wide variety of hydrographic-related digital data sources, and is fully aligned with mainstream international geospatial standards, in particular the ISO 19100 series of geographic standards, thereby enabling the easier integration of hydrographic data and applications into geospatial solutions. - IHO

Why S-100 ?• join mainstream GIS– maximizes access to COTS software and development

• interoperability with other ISO 19100 based profiles

• new components not developed in isolation

• easier use of hydro data beyond HOs and ECDIS users - coastal zone mapping, security, inundation modeling, etc

• extensible and active feature catalogue registry

• Plug-and-Play updating of data, symbology and software enhancements

• The S-100 standard has been developed based on experience gained through the development and use of the existing IHO S-57 Standard).

• S-100 has been documented using an object-oriented notation known as the Unified Modelling Language (UML). (Although UML defines nine types of diagrams, only class, object and package diagrams have been used in S-100).

General confusion ?

• S-57 is NOT the ENC Product specification• S-100 is NOT the ENC Product specification

S-57 and S-100: generic framework standards for hydrographic and related information

Any product specifications developed using S-100 would then follow in an S-10n series. Under this schema, next-generation ENC

Product Specification based on S-100 is underway and is designated as

S-101.

Nomenclature

New possibilities with S-100

• Unbound Feature Concept dictionaries• Feature catalogues• Flexible version control : An entry is

classified as being either: – valid (latest version) – superseded (previous version/s) – retired (no longer recommended for use) – non valid (proposed but not accepted or no

longer acceptable)

• Metadata• Spatial geometry–wider range of database and encoding

applications • Imagery and gridded data: This includes

images from sensors such as aerial photography or LIDAR, photographs that can be associated with vector based feature oriented data and scanned paper chart products, commonly known as “raster Charts.”• Multiple encoding • Standardised product specifications

S-100 Management and Governance Framework

• S-100 is supported by an organisational and governance framework that will involve all the stakeholder groups.

• The IHO is the principal sponsor and overall control of the standard.

• However, the development and extension of the standard to meet particular usergroup requirements will be placed under the control of those user-groups.

• A “Registry” is the entire information system (or location) in which a collection of Registers is located. For details: http://registry.iho.int

• In the case of S-100, IHO is hosting a Registry that provides a facility to store various Registers of hydrographic-related information such as feature data dictionaries, data types, and metadata.

One of the most significant aspects in terms of alignment with the ISO TC/211 19100 series of standards is the employment of a registry and registers.

• For each Register, there will be an organization that will be responsible for its content and management.

• A major benefit of the Registry concept is its flexibility.

• Multiple versions of similar entries in a data dictionary can be maintained using unique identification and classification.

ISO PACKAGES

Source: Ward et al, 2008

* above list is incomplete

• S-100 will never be “frozen” although the frequency of new versions will be strictly controlled by the IHO as the Registry Owner.

• There will be three types of change proposal in S-100: clarification, correction and extension.

• Any change proposal must be one of these types.

Will S-100 also be frozen?

• Using ISO-developed components and terminology will help ensure that S-100 and future extensions are in the mainstream of the geospatial information industry.

• Conformance with the ISO/TC211 standards will maximize the use of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software applications and development.

• New components of S-100 will not be developed in isolation from the rest of the geospatial information technology community.

Benefits:

• Any new requirements can be incorporated within the established framework of ISO/TC211 based standards.

• S-100 will be interoperable with other ISO/TC211 standards and profiles.

• There are many national standards bodies that will take full advantage of S-100 being aligned with ISO/TC211 standards (For example: NSDI).

Benefits . . . . .

Next GenENC

S-101AML

NauticalPubs

Gridded

MIOInlandENCBathy

ENC3D &Temporal ICE

S-100 will support a greater variety of data sources, products and services

S-101 – New Product Specification for the Electronic Navigational Chart

• S-101 is a new Product Specification for the Electronic Navigational Chart.

• It is currently under development by the IHO Transfer Standards and Maintenance Applications Development Working Group (TSMAD). S-101 ENCs will remain, fundamentally, the basic navigation tool for ECDIS and therefore, most of the features of the S-57 ENC are retained.

• Aimed at improving the efficiency of the data and improving the user experience.

• Many of the changes may appear obscure or innocuous, but taken as a whole they will ensure that S-101 is, to a large extent future-proofed, unlike S-57 which is becoming ever more unmanageable.

Some of the benefits of S-101 • S-101 will eventually replace S-57 ENCs as the fundamental

nautical chart data used in ECDIS

• Many of the new features of S-101 such as Information types and complex attributes will improve its usability to the mariner

• Improved pick reports: S-101 cursor pick reports will be based on a number of user customizations allowing the returned data to be filtered by, feature types, pick radius, themes etc.

• Reduced clutter on the ECDIS SCREEN

• Easy data loading based only on a set of predefined scales aligned to standard radar ranges

• The concept of navigation purpose codes will be restricted for use only in presenting ENCs in a visual catalogue.

• The number of navigation purpose codes will also be reduced to three; Port and Approaches, Coastal Passage and Ocean Passage/Routing (presently there are six purpose codes)

Migrating from S-57 Edition 3.1 to S-100ENC data conforming to S-57 Edition 3.1 will continue to be a requirement for typeapproved, IMO-compliant ECDIS for the foreseeable future - even after S-100 has been released. As a consequence, hydrographic offices will continue, as at present, to produce Edition 3.1 ENC data to support this.

Interoperability issues• Demand for digital hydrographic data in S-57 format

has constantly been on the higher side. However, due to its inflexible interoperability issues with other GIS formats have made the present S-57 standard more rigid and confined to ENC production only.

• Moreover, there were no particular standards for land GIS and more and more new formats are evolving, thereby expecting the same to happen in marine GIS too.

• The aim of these standards is to meet the safe and secured marine navigation, not for the interoperability with other land GIS standards.

• S-57 standard was developed as transfer standard for digital hydrographic data but not definitely to suit the seamless integration of land and sea features.

• Real time navigation always demands for reliable data content, high accuracy and more security.

• Despite the fact that the standards are meeting all those maritime safety requirements, the only limitation is their synchronisation with other GIS formats.

• The object catalogue and attributes in S-57 standard have an exhaustive coverage of land based objects too. The same can be used by other GIS users as well.

• These time-tested standards can further be improved by adding more land based objects which would become a comprehensive standard for both land and sea.

• Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and International Organisation for Standards (ISO) are now active participants in the development of S-100 and related standards.

• This combination of IHO, ISO and OGC and other stakeholders would definitely bring in best standards to overcome the shortfalls in S-57.

e-Navigation concept by IMO• The International maritime Organization (IMO) is

developing the e-Navigation concept. Under this concept, e-Navigation is defined as: “The harmonized collection, integration, exchange, presentation and analysis of marine information onboard and ashore by electronic means to enhance berth to berth navigation and related services for safety and security at sea and protection of the marine environment”.

• The aim of the IMO is to develop a strategic vision for e-navigation, to integrate existing and new navigational tools, in particular electronic tools, in an all-embracing system that will contribute to enhanced navigational safety while simultaneously reducing the burden on the navigator.

Way ahead:–Accept the marine standards as they are,

because of their universal reach and acceptance.

– Synchronisation with other standards - Insist on the software industries for software translators to read these standards rather than reinventing the wheel.

–Bring other standards into the already time-tested and proven to deliver the best to all users and to the mariners in particular.

Way ahead…….

• Internationally, data exchange procedures for marine data are already established, then difficult to migrate from these standards to new ones.

• Any improvements or upgradations to the exisitng standards is only possible at this level and overall change is extremely difficult.

Conclusion• Focussed efforts on standardisation of various data formats are promising to resolve many issues of interoperability.

• Coordinated work of IMO, IHO and OGC would definitely bring in new standards of which some are already developed and the others are in the process that may make the life much easier for the users and the global GIS community.

•Socio-economic factors would always push the industries, stakeholders, researchers and users to meet the day to day demands.

• Science that is applied to meet any socio-economic demand(s) takes the form of technology to address such demand(s). Thereafter, this technology will become infrastructure for continuous realisation of those demands.

• Maritime regime is very dynamic and on one side, demands in this field are progressively increasing and on the other side, those demands have aptly been met with the technology. However, improvements are never ending likewise the requirements.

Conclusion …

“Yesterday’s Science is Today’s Technology;

Yesterday’s Technology is Today’s Infrastructure”

– anonymous.

Hope all developments in marine navigation will keep the “GLOBAL COMMONS” more…

“safe, clean and Peaceful”

Thank Youfor Your

Kind Presence and Patience