Category : Charting

in May 1992, the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) had adopted a standard aimed at defining the specifications of electronic charts, the ENC, used by ships, as well as the devices that display them, Called ECDIS. This standard has been published under the name S-57 – IHO Special Publication N°57. This standard was subsequently significantly updated, The version 3.1, in November 2000. Ten years were then left to the various operators, manufacturers and publishers, to bring their navigation systems on board ships into compliance. In January 2010, A new standard S-100 IHO Special Publication – Universal Hydrographic Data Model has been published, an important evolution aimed at adapting to this rapid growth in the data available for navigation. Read more …

Over the last few years, I have expressed myself several times on the quality and reliability levels of the electronic charts we use in yachting., more particularly with the navigation applications of our mobile devices (¹).

Since the oldest article in 2013, It appears seven years later that nothing has really changed. On the occasion of a search for a landing in Galicia, I discover that some publishers have still not updated changes that are almost five years old, like the port of A Coruña, which is so busy. I can always be told that the examples I will cite on the West Atlantic coast do not affect safety in any way., But it gives reason to wonder about the rest of the coastline. It should be remembered that SHOM took nearly a year to update on its raster charts the extension of the port of Minimes in La Rochelle, while the German cartographer NV Verlag had long since represented it perfectly on the NV Charts (²). Read more …