Latitude and Longitude - no more?

[Buck Turgidson]

But even with protocols in place it was not unheard of for aircraft to arrive at the other side of the pond 60nm north or south of where they should have been. Rare but not unheard of.
These days the error would be picked up by ground systems which didn’t exist when I was flying the Atlantic frequently.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

But even with protocols in place it was not unheard of for aircraft to arrive at the other side of the pond 60nm north or south of where they should have been. Rare but not unheard of.
These days the error would be picked up by ground systems which didn’t exist when I was flying the Atlantic frequently.

There are ISO standards for the machine transfer of latitude and longitude, which are very precise and clear. Unfortunately, they aren't really suitable for verbal communication. There are ways to express latitude and longitude unambiguously in any format, but there is still the potential for miscommunication.

The following is completely unambiguous:

DDD.ddddd degrees and decimals
DDD MM.mmmm degrees, minutes and decimal minutes
DDD MM SS.sssss degrees minutes seconds and decimal seconds.

The space can be replaced by any non numeric character; of course conventionally °, ' and ". A suffix of N,S,W, or E can be used.

 

[Buck Turgidson]

There are ISO standards for the machine transfer of latitude and longitude, which are very precise and clear. Unfortunately, they aren't really suitable for verbal communication. There are ways to express latitude and longitude unambiguously in any format, but there is still the potential for miscommunication.

The following is completely unambiguous:

DDD.ddddd degrees and decimals
DDD MM.mmmm degrees, minutes and decimal minutes
DDD MM SS.sssss degrees minutes seconds and decimal seconds.

The space can be replaced by any non numeric character; of course conventionally °, ' and ". A suffix of N,S,W, or E can be used.

Indeed but back in the days I’m referring to the crew had to manually load the waypoints into 1,2 or even 3 inertial navigation units or if you were really lucky a single Flight management system plus an INS. There are procedures for entering, confirming and monitoring progress but humans are fallible. These days the route is normally uploaded digitally and checked by the crew. Much easier than manually entering dozens if not hundreds of waypoints.

 

[lustyd]

manually entering dozens if not hundreds of waypoints.

I feel like waypoints are getting a bit old hat these days too, with new navigation systems automating the routes, and point and click or swipe and tap negating the need to create a waypoint entirely. Not to mention, most of us are not transferring between paper and digital any more. I certainly no longer make a waypoint off a headland, I often don't even tap and go I just eyeball it on the chartplotter at the helm with a bit of zooming in and out to check features. This allows the sailing to be more flexible with conditions.

 

[mjcoon]

There are ISO standards for the machine transfer of latitude and longitude, which are very precise and clear. Unfortunately, they aren't really suitable for verbal communication. There are ways to express latitude and longitude unambiguously in any format, but there is still the potential for miscommunication.

The following is completely unambiguous:

DDD.ddddd degrees and decimals
DDD MM.mmmm degrees, minutes and decimal minutes
DDD MM SS.sssss degrees minutes seconds and decimal seconds.

The space can be replaced by any non numeric character; of course conventionally °, ' and ". A suffix of N,S,W, or E can be used.

Suffix of N,S,W, or E are not needed if a sign is used (and everyone knows that convention). Or to be more confusing, use letter and sign. Also, doesn't DDD mean longitude and DD for latitude?

When I wrote some freebie navigation software years ago I was taken to task by some European users for failing to be consistent with whether decimal points were rendered as commas...

 

[RunAgroundHard]

Not sure AI will help, but the technology does exist in some luxury cars to send a a call to the emergency services if a road traffic collision occurs involving the vehicle.

Even without AI your phone is listening to the people around you, detecting their devices and analysing data. AI could easily detect who is with you, who is on the boat and conclude when you depart that the number is not going to change. By listening AI could work out what is going on and decide to communicate.

Scenario
A group of 4 gets on the boat and the devices work out, without being told who is on the boat just from listening and verifying, such as detecting other personal devices. The boat sails away and the device knows this and uses its AI to draw up a crew manifesto. One of your crew has a heart attack, the device works out from the verbal communication, maybe even from some trend detected in voice or smart watch, that some one had had a heart attack. It develops a response scenario and requests to send a mayday. You allow that. It then tells you that the fastest option to medical aid is based on other feed back it is detecting eg sail to harbour ABC as ambulance has been mobilised. Meanwhile it has linked your phone to an AE service who are now calling you. You don't need to tell it where you are, the device all ready knows.

Personally, thinking about current tech, the above is possible already. AI will just make it easier if there is a need and possibly a market. There are AI fridges now that give you recipes for food that is about to expire. AI will help in marine based leisure incidents at some future time.

Meanwhile, in the scenario above, the ambulance has just launched its drone with a defibrillator and your device is calmly telling you that the defibrillator is 5 minutes away.

We shall see.

 

[Supine Being]

Even without AI your phone is listening to the people around you, detecting their devices and analysing data. AI could easily detect who is with you, who is on the boat and conclude when you depart that the number is not going to change. By listening AI could work out what is going on and decide to communicate.

Scenario
A group of 4 gets on the boat and the devices work out, without being told who is on the boat just from listening and verifying, such as detecting other personal devices. The boat sails away and the device knows this and uses its AI to draw up a crew manifesto. One of your crew has a heart attack, the device works out from the verbal communication, maybe even from some trend detected in voice or smart watch, that some one had had a heart attack. It develops a response scenario and requests to send a mayday. You allow that. It then tells you that the fastest option to medical aid is based on other feed back it is detecting eg sail to harbour ABC as ambulance has been mobilised. Meanwhile it has linked your phone to an AE service who are now calling you. You don't need to tell it where you are, the device all ready knows.

Personally, thinking about current tech, the above is possible already. AI will just make it easier if there is a need and possibly a market. There are AI fridges now that give you recipes for food that is about to expire. AI will help in marine based leisure incidents at some future time.

Meanwhile, in the scenario above, the ambulance has just launched its drone with a defibrillator and your device is calmly telling you that the defibrillator is 5 minutes away.

We shall see.

Yes, but no. Maybe some years from now, but certainly not yet although, small scale, you can see how this could be achieved. But, in practice with today's, or even next gen tech:

• Phones don't listen to conversations all the time. They do listen for a trigger words such as 'Hey Siri' and then, because they don't have the processing power to parse what is said next, they send the next few words that you say to cloud servers for analysis and actions.
• Following from the above, we don't have the resources to scale this up. It would take an unthinkable amount of processing and data bandwidth to carry out just the parsing of dialogue for billions of users all at the same time, never mind that sort of AI analysis on the back of it.
• Bluetooth isn't designed to identify an individual via a phone. It can be done by nefarious actors under certain circumstances, but it's not a given. We managed it with track and trace with the user giving permissions for bluetooth fingerprints to be linked to an ID in a database, but should we? Because...
• This is the biggie - privacy would be a huge concern. I would not be at all comfortable with every conversation being had by anyone, anywhere, being available to anyone in authority that cared to look at it, and nor should you. There are immense implications for personal freedom and privacy here, especially in regimes that are less benevolent than, and I choose my words carefully, the one that we enjoy here and now.

I think it's an interesting idea in principle, but horrible in practice. Although, people are already surprisingly willing to give data away, so what do I know.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Suffix of N,S,W, or E are not needed if a sign is used (and everyone knows that convention). Or to be more confusing, use letter and sign. Also, doesn't DDD mean longitude and DD for latitude?

When I wrote some freebie navigation software years ago I was taken to task by some European users for failing to be consistent with whether decimal points were rendered as commas...

Yes - that is in fact the way I'd do it, but sign conventions are less well known, and perhaps less intuitive, west being negative in the system I use. Antarctica warps my perceptions, and the sign conversation for longitude can be either as long as it's used consistently. But the suffix is more transparent for most people, and avoids ambiguity.

And yes, if it's for latitude and longitude you might do DD for latitude and DDD for longitude. I was trying to keep it simple and universal. As I gave it, it would work for any angular measurement.