Contents / Matières Session / Séance Authors / Auteurs 12 Index Section 12 Charting and Navigation Cartographie marine et navigation Electronic Navigational Charting around Australia: Finally, we get to the cartographic production bit! Ronald A. Furness The Cartographic Generalization of Soundings on Chart by Artificial Neural Network Techniques Jia Yao Wang, Zhen Tian Performance Measurement of Combined Versus Separate Radar and Electronic Chart Displays Don C. Donderi, Sharon McFadden The Challenges of Production of ENC Cells and Paper Charts from one Common Database Tiina Tuurnala, Ismo Laitakari An expert system approach for the design and composition of nautical charts Lysandros Tsoulos, Konstantinos Stefanakis Croatian State Boundary at the Adriatic Sea Ivka Tunjic, Miljenko Lapaine Production of Thematic Nautical Charts and Handbooks for the Sea Area of the Eastern Adriatic Coast Slavko Horvat, Zeljko Zeleznjak, Tea Duplancic The use of global mathematical models in the cartography of marine sandbanks Tom Vande Wiele Making practical and effective electronic aeronautical charts Sonia Rivest, Rupert Brooks, Bob Johnson Charting and Navigation / Cartographie marine et navigation Contents / Matières Session / Séance Authors / Auteurs 12 Index Environmental Mapping of Russia’s Seas Using GIS I. Suetova and L. Ushakova Airborne remote sensing for water quality mapping on the coastal zone of Abruzzo (Italy) Claudio Conese, Marco Benvenuti, Paola Grande Ottawa ICA / ACI 1999 - Proceedings / Actes 12 Index Session / Séance 02-B Electronic Navigational Charting around Australia: Finally, we get to the cartographic production bit! Ronald A. Furness Australian Hydrographic Office 8 Station Street, WOLLONGONG 2500, Australia [email protected] Abstract The paper (and presentation) will address the cartographic challenges presently being grappled with and met by the Australian Hydrographic Office’s (AHO) cartographers as they work to provide mariners with the first authorised and thus, government backed, electronic navigational chart (ENC) database of the inner shipping route through Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The title reflects a certain personal level of frustration with the time it has taken the world’s hydrographic community to get down to the process of compiling official ENCs. It will place the Australian experiences in context and discuss some of the cartographic production issues that have arisen. Background The last decade or so has been a thrilling period in the development of nautical charting around the globe. This truly international activity has seen the development of electronic charts to the point where they will soon, routinely, deliver a range of capabilities suited for use on a variety of ingenious programmed devices and applications. Electronic charts promise both improvements in productivity and increased safety margins to the navigation task of vessels at sea. However, progress has not been without its challenges! Government agen- cies and private commercial concerns around the world have cooperated, competed, fought, argued, created and generally excelled to bring electronic charting to fruition. The 1990s have been a decade of concerted activity – some of it cooperative and some competitive. This has resulted in international standards for electronic charting which promise to deliver to mariners authorised electronic charts of the highest standard. This is supported by the delivery to the market of complementary systems which provide dynamic and real-time navigational capability to the ship’s master, navigator, regulator, safety authority and ship’s owners and crews simultaneously. Meanwhile, many commercial companies have pushed ahead to market, often brilliantly designed, navigational applications for viewing and integrating elec- tronic charts with onboard ship sensors, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS). The result is that the market will be soon awash with products of various detail, quality, capability and theme. The database design for official electronic charts has been nothing short of brilliant in this author’s view – and cartographers have been to the fore on the decade long, tortuous development road. The design of object- oriented models of reality – sheer genius! Cartographic communication theory has withstood the acid test in perception laboratories as screen-based presentation and symbolisation issues relating to the presentation of charting graphics have been all but re- solved. Yet we marine cartographers are only just in the position to start to be able to grapple with production cartography issues. “That’s tomorrow’s problem!” we have been saying, but tomorrow has already passed. Charting and Navigation / Cartographie marine et navigation 12 Index The promises of increases in safety margins are so attractive and necessary that the market for electronic charts and systems is increasing apace. Government agencies and commercial organisations are now tussling to define their roles and their positions in a market hungry for electronic chart technology, yet some are often oblivious or unwilling to acknowledge any potential shortcomings. Realisation of the potential increases in safety margins demands the highest quality and integrity of data in the electronic digital chart. In the view of this author, they will only be obtained through reappraisal of the basic tenets of cartographic professionalism. Compilation of electronic charts must ultimately rest on a full carto- graphic assessment of the best fundamental data available. A simple transference of existing, single product focussed cartography into the object oriented data models which underpin electronic navigational charts is inadequate, notwithstanding the fact that the exigencies of business dictate “acceptable” short-term alterna- tives, such as scanned or vectorised paper charts. The whole process is presently testing the professional skills of the cartographers of the Australian Hydrographic Office as it orients its future chart production capability towards delivery of ENCs to the mariner. The Australian Context Consider if you will a relatively remote conti- nent, approximately the size of the United States and with a continental shelf of similar area. This continent, Australia, has a population which is approximately 18 millions. In order for Australia to meet its international charting obligations it needs to be clever and to exploit technology to the hilt. Those technologies about to be deliv- ered to its new state-of-the-art, purpose built, hydrographic survey ships and Laser Airborne Depth Sounder have been world leaders and still Australia struggles, like many other major hydrographic nations, to meet its obligations to Diagram 1 modernise its nautical charts and deliver ENC. Diagram 1 indicates that much of Australia’s maritime area is not adequately surveyed to modern standards. The dark areas are considered adequate. The faintly shaded area represents the continental shelf. A brief perusal of this diagram will alert the reader to the fact that, for the foreseeable future, the Australian marine cartographer will be forced to meld together dispa- rate data sets and this will impact on methodologies for the immediate future. It is clearly some time off before Australia will have a complete ENC based totally on full bottom coverage digital data. A Brief History of Charting in Australia The Australian Hydrographic Office (AHO) has been a traditional charting agency until relatively recent times, delivering to mariners authorised paper nautical charts. In the mid-1980s Australia embarked on a program of modernisation which continues today as it transits from a single product deliverer (paper charts) towards becoming a modern hydrographic information supplier. The earlier computer aided techniques used in the AHO were limited and limiting in that they sought to assist chart production by replicating paper chart produc- tion methodologies. The main limiting factor in the 1970s and 1980s was technology of course; screens, Ottawa ICA / ACI 1999 - Proceedings / Actes 12 Index plotters, digital data collection, positioning; but nevertheless, most of the main ideas were taking shape at that time for developing ultimate ENCs. The AHO converted all of its charts to a raster scanned medium and routinely delivers charts in this form to mariners within a product regime that has mastered the updating requirements of the charts. The Australian Seafarer® service was introduced in 1997. Seafarer® is a fully electronic chart service providing digital repro- ductions of the official Australian paper charts in a raster format. It is suitable for use in a wide range of maritime applications, from fully integrated bridge systems to stand-alone PC based Electronic Charting Sys- tems (ENC). An integral part of the product is an update service, which provides the latest new editions and Notices to Mariners updates on a CD that automatically updates the charts. The product has received a number of prestigious awards. However, the market clearly wants electronic navigation charts of vector format for use in the now available ECDIS systems. The main limiting factor on all hydrographic offices, but especially the AHO, is the lack of available digital data. The AHO has embarked on a major capital investment which will see its data in digital form within about three years (known as Project SEA 1430) but in the interim must seek to find ways of bringing nationally authorised ENCs to the market sooner than that. Since 1998 it has been