A mini report from Royal Institute of Navigation Conference Friday 6th Feb

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ex-Gladys

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Hi All,

I attended the above conference at Trinity House London on Friday, as I was wanting to find out where things were going with leisure vessels getting APPROVED electronic chart systems. As a side note I've been a shore-based Cruising Instructor at West Mersea YC for 18 years, and have been trying to untangle the maze that surrounds the future of paper charts, and how us trainers are meant to teach theory in the light of the disappearance of said charts.

Well it was a VERY interesting day (Tillergirl attended by video link and will confirm), but the bottom line is that the MCGA has formally said that paper charts will be available " so long as there is a demand" - which there certainly is currently.

The charts will not be as current charts, because we have now moved full circle, where digitised paper charts formed the basis for ECDIS and small vessel ECS, and in future the next gen of paper charts will be produced through a UKHO auto chart partner printing from the underpinning data contained in the currently approved electronic charts.

There was lots of other interesting stuff, but too much to report here. However I would really recommend the excellent booklet produced by RIN and available to download here: RIN Booklet
 
So is your average chart plotter going to be an approved navigation system or will we still official need paper charts in addition to the chart plotter.
Is the chart plotter startup screen still going to say "not to be used for navigation"?
 
I've tried to give an early idea of what's going on. Where everything ends up is a different question. Much of this stuff still has to be agreed under the umbrella of international organisations. My personal view is that the "Electronic Navigation Chart" (ENC) which is the approved data to be part of a cartographer's product (e.g. C-Map, Navionics, Lighthouse, SavvyNavvy) and additional "private" layers could be added to that core data to provide a differentiated product per company, but underpinned by the approved Nav Data from the HO's.

The only certainty is that there is no longer an end date to paper charts. If we do get to approved ENC's on leisure kit, then the "not to be used for navigation will disappear!
 
The problem is that there is no standard for leisure equipment, and agreeing a standard is arduous and takes a long time! I speak as a former member of the standards mafia - I was directly involved with ISO, BSI and IEEE in the field of standards for geographic information. And without such standards, a chart supplier can't be certain of what the end user is actually seeing. Commercial ECDIS systems must be individually certified, with stringent equipment requirements, and only use approved chart data, with highly controlled update systems. Applying that to the diversified market of yacht equipment is going to be really difficult, and would require agreement between equipment manufacturers, chart suppliers, marine safety organizations and no doubt others I haven't thought of! And, of course, it would do away with some of the factors that equipment suppliers use to lock us in to their ecosystem. And there's the issue of independent chart suppliers such as Antares and our own @tillergirl , who we would all agree provide valuable services, but who could never conform to the sort of QA that would be required. Perhaps I should emphasise again that hydrographic agencies apply as much effort to QA as they do to compiling charts; I've been part of the process.

Even if an initiative started tomorrow to derive suitable standards, it would take many years to produce a workable set of standards. Just for comparison, I initiated and saw to completion a very simple ISO standard in a related field (it was to do with specifying coordinate systems). It took about 3 years from my first initiative to the standard being published. And most of that was boilerplate copied from a similar standard; the framework already existed. Creating a set of interrelated standards for a sort of leisure version of ECDIS could be expected to take at the very least 5 years; more likely ten or more. And even that would assume that the industry joined the initiative wholeheartedly. When standards for electronic documents were being created, Microsoft pretty much refused to play ball unless its Word format was accepted as a standard; we can probably expect similar attitudes from marine suppliers.
 
I think the only certainty is the 'not to be used for navigation' will not go in my sailing life time. Since AP you are about, a question please? This is a entirely side issue but I was greatly interested in Bob Bradfield's (Antares) comments about rocks. It so happened that yesterday I submitted a 'dossier' to the UKHO arguing the discovery of what I now think is a dangerous rock ledge. What actually constitutes reliable evidence of a new rock (or rock ledge), given amateur (but expensive) kit?

Best I not talk about Microsoft Word!
 
My interpretation is that there may well be additional "private" layers as well as approved layers... There is absolutely recognition that even the UK Civil Hydrography Programme (under the remit of MCGA) which defines two workstreams; Shallow water areas (0-40m) and Medium water areas (0-200m) won't help.
The equipment used is extremely delicate and, in our version of shallow (0-10m) is at high risk of damage - and that is a tens of thousands value device. As TG said, Bob Bradfield showed some data where a UKCHP vessel had gone and it obviously was way short of where Antares charts cover.
The answer is potentially in the Category of Zone of Confidence (CATZOC) for those layers. If you've downloaded the RIN Booklet, the picture on P33 helps
 
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No, deffo no. On the edge of the Knoll (south side of the Blackwater entrance). There is only 0.3m CD at worst, 1.1m CD further along the edge. I have sent in 29 images of the side scan to the UKHO. They have given me a nice acknowledgement and they will be considering the evidence. Amateur kit is quite a big issue: You can go out into an area that hasn't been surveyed for at least 39 years and amateur kit can say, accurately, an awful lot that is very helpful. And then you see an anomaly and then speculate. And the amateur kit has gaps.

Gladys and I hope to get down to the SW Sunk in May.

Didn't mean to hijack Larry's thread talking about about rocks. We are at an important stage of change.
 
tillergirl said:
I think the only certainty is the 'not to be used for navigation' will not go in my sailing life time. Since AP you are about, a question please? This is a entirely side issue but I was greatly interested in Bob Bradfield's (Antares) comments about rocks. It so happened that yesterday I submitted a 'dossier' to the UKHO arguing the discovery of what I now think is a dangerous rock ledge. What actually constitutes reliable evidence of a new rock (or rock ledge), given amateur (but expensive) kit?

Best I not talk about Microsoft Word!
Click to expand...
About only electronically - I'm on the other side of the world right now, 8 hours ahead of you!

The problem with isolated rocks is that acoustic depth sounding uses devices with a relatively broad beam-width, and the sonar ranges to the nearest object within the beam, which may not be along the direction the equipment points to. A big issue with satellite radar altimetry of ice sheets and radar sounding of glaciers, but equally applicable to acoustic depth sounding. See THIS for more detail! The good news is that it's quite safe - the actual range is always equal to or greater than the indicated range - but it means that isolated rocks or ridges are exaggerated, and can mean that a few isolated bumps appear to be a ridge in the data. It can be corrected for, but generally only if the entire signal from transmit pulse to greatest depth is recorded; physicists call the process deconvolution; seismic surveyors call it migration! But it's beyond the capacity of amateur equipment, and in general can't be applied in real time; it has to be a post-processing step.
 
ex-Gladys said:
My interpretation is that there may well be additional "private" layers as well as approved layers... There is absolutely recognition that even the UK Civil Hydrography Programme (under the remit of MCGA) which defines two workstreams; Shallow water areas (0-40m) and Medium water areas (0-200m) won't help.
The equipment used is extremely delicate and, in our version of shallow (0-10m) is at high risk of damage - and that is a tens of thousands value device. As TG said, Bob Bradfield showed some data where a UKCHP vessel had gone and it obviously was way short of where Antares charts cover.
The answer is potentially in the Category of Zone of Confidence (CATZOC) for those layers. If you've downloaded the RIN Booklet, the picture on P33 helps
Click to expand...
The only document in town is the MCA Small Vessel - ECS Performance "Standard" which only allows UKHO and similar data.

As was pointed out to them at a trade show where they presented it, it's not a standard until a Standards Defining Organisation has published it and the requirements are far beyond what a current plotter does - to the point of almost being too difficult to implement. Whatever they come up with needs to be a mass market device or it will be financially beyond the means of most of the intended users.
 
st599 said:
The only document in town is the MCA Small Vessel - ECS Performance "Standard" which only allows UKHO and similar data.

As was pointed out to them at a trade show where they presented it, it's not a standard until a Standards Defining Organisation has published it and the requirements are far beyond what a current plotter does - to the point of almost being too difficult to implement. Whatever they come up with needs to be a mass market device or it will be financially beyond the means of most of the intended users.
Click to expand...
I haven't seen the MCA document, but it's exceedingly unlikely that it could be accepted "as is" by BSI or ISO - and for standards that have to be applicable world-wide, we're looking at ISO. There is a body of standards for geographic information (ISO 19000 series) and some of them are in use by HOs already - e.g., those concerning feature catalogues. I could imagine a suitable standard being a schema applied to these existing standards; otherwise there would be a lot of reinventing the wheel. But the standards process is exceedingly meticulous, and time has to be allowed for ALL relevant bodies to comment at each stage. It's a long, drawn out process!

The appropriate process would be for the MCA to approach BSI with a proposal for a new standard for marine charts, with two strands, one to adopt the existing standards for commercial systems and another for leisure systems. That would probably go to BSI IST/36 (if which I was a member). BSI would then put that to ISO, probably to ISO TC211 (again, I was a member, representing Antarctica!). Only BSI (in the UK) can propose new ISO standards.
 
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AntarcticPilot said:
I haven't seen the MCA document, but it's exceedingly unlikely that it could be accepted "as is" by BSI or ISO - and for standards that have to be applicable world-wide, we're looking at ISO. There is a body of standards for geographic information (ISO 19000 series) and some of them are in use by HOs already - e.g., those concerning feature catalogues. I could imagine a suitable standard being a schema applied to these existing standards; otherwise there would be a lot of reinventing the wheel. But the standards process is exceedingly meticulous, and time has to be allowed for ALL relevant bodies to comment at each stage. It's a long, drawn out process!

The appropriate process would be for the MCA to approach BSI with a proposal for a new standard for marine charts, with two strands, one to adopt the existing standards for commercial systems and another for leisure systems. That would probably go to BSI IST/36 (if which I was a member). BSI would then put that to ISO, probably to ISO TC211 (again, I was a member, representing Antarctica!). Only BSI (in the UK) can propose new ISO standards.
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Or the UKHO could send it to IMO. But as it requires redundant power and GNSS, government ECS only, VDES or satellite ECS updates...

They've made a wishlist that is unsuitable for small craft.
 
tillergirl said:
No, deffo no. On the edge of the Knoll (south side of the Blackwater entrance). There is only 0.3m CD at worst, 1.1m CD further along the edge. I have sent in 29 images of the side scan to the UKHO. They have given me a nice acknowledgement and they will be considering the evidence. Amateur kit is quite a big issue: You can go out into an area that hasn't been surveyed for at least 39 years and amateur kit can say, accurately, an awful lot that is very helpful. And then you see an anomaly and then speculate. And the amateur kit has gaps.

Gladys and I hope to get down to the SW Sunk in May.

Didn't mean to hijack Larry's thread talking about about rocks. We are at an important stage of change.
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Does that mean that you get to name it as the discoverer? Tillergirl reef?
 
st599 said:
Or the UKHO could send it to IMO. But as it requires redundant power and GNSS, government ECS only, VDES or satellite ECS updates...

They've made a wishlist that is unsuitable for small craft.
Click to expand...
I think that would take even longer! But I agree that if they require all that, it's unrealistic for a yacht. A requirement for an alternative (such as paper charts!) would provide redundancy, which seems to be the aim. And I quite agree with them that redundant systems are highly desirable
 
AntarcticPilot said:
I think that would take even longer! But I agree that if they require all that, it's unrealistic for a yacht. A requirement for an alternative (such as paper charts!) would provide redundancy, which seems to be the aim. And I quite agree with them that redundant systems are highly desirable
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Indeed, but how many yachts have a redundant power supply?
Parts of it maybe, but on most you have a single engine and alternator charging one or more batteries, to be truly redundant, you'd need two engines, two alternators and two batteries
 
DanTribe said:
Does that mean that you get to name it as the discoverer? Tillergirl reef?
Click to expand...
Eek, no. Actually there is an alternative. On account of having read AP's link for me having fused and melted what I had left as a brain, I have a plan. We found a 'summat' (aka an anomaly) with 0.3m CD. We will drop down there at LW springs and then I'll push Larry (aka Gladys) over the side with his socks off. He can root about and if he finds rock, we can name it 'Gladys'. He is worth the fame and I think there is something unique about the name ........ 'The Gladys'. Yeap, that's the name.
 
tillergirl said:
Eek, no. Actually there is an alternative. On account of having read AP's link for me having fused and melted what I had left as a brain, I have a plan. We found a 'summat' (aka an anomaly) with 0.3m CD. We will drop down there at LW springs and then I'll push Larry (aka Gladys) over the side with his socks off. He can root about and if he finds rock, we can name it 'Gladys'. He is worth the fame and I think there is something unique about the name ........ 'The Gladys'. Yeap, that's the name.
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Most of the complications in my paper are because I deal with the satellite case where the curvature of the Earth matters. It is simpler if that's irrelevant!
 
I am hoping the conclusion would be based on the balance of probability rather than beyond reasonable doubt. E.G. One might as well give it a miss! Just in case. Larry and I did ponder whether two... best I say ... vessels were aware of the height of tide whilst passing over.
 
st599 said:
Indeed, but how many yachts have a redundant power supply?
Parts of it maybe, but on most you have a single engine and alternator charging one or more batteries, to be truly redundant, you'd need two engines, two alternators and two batteries
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Or enough solar to charge your spare battery on a gloomy day to keep you going however long to reach safety?
 
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