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NOAA to offer frequently updated navigation charts

By Pamela Glass, Washington Correspondent

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has launched a number of ambitious programs designed to update its suites of paper and electronic charts and get them into mariners' hands more quickly.

These initiatives are now being tested, and mariners will likely see the products available for sale by the end of the year, according to officials at the Office of Coast Survey, a division of NOAA's National Ocean Service.

RASTER, VECTOR UPDATES

NOAA has been gradually changing the way it makes charts. Until four years ago, cartographers would use a manual drafting and engraving process to produce charts. It took almost eight months to revise and print a chart for public use. Today, thanks to advanced computer technology and digital files, NOAA has cut the lag time to about two months.

And, an even shorter turnaround is planned. Soon, it could take just a few days for electronic updates.

In 1995, the agency introduced raster nautical charts, which are georeferenced electronic images of paper nautical charts. These are exact reproductions of the paper charts familiar to mariners, except that they appear on the user's computer screen. (All 1,000 NOAA paper charts are available as digital raster charts.) The raster charts have been wildly popular since their introduction, with 1.2 million of them sold in just three years.

To further improve the accuracy and timeliness of the charts. NOAA is developing a weekly update service. The agency has already entered into a partnership with MapTech Inc., Greenland, N.H., which will provide the updates.

Here's how the service will work: NOAA will receive, in advance of public release, all navigation-related corrections from the Coast Guard, National Imagery and Mapping Agency, and the Canadian Hydrographic Service. Updated files will be sent to MapTech via a high-speed data line. The company will create an "electronic patch" for the mariner's CD-ROM collection of raster charts.

Patches will be available to paid subscribers via the Internet and on floppy disk, as well as through marine specialty stores and chart agents. The cost hasn't been set yet.

When a patch is applied, revisions will appear on the user's computer screen, but he can still return to the old chart. The new information will include such things as the repositioning of buoys, the removal of obstructions and alteration of navigation channels due to dredging.

Very little is required of a mariner to use raster charts. He needs a computer - any kind of PC or portable will do - navigation software, which costs around $500, and the data charts, priced at about $200.

The update service will be tested in June, with the goal of bringing it totally online by the end of the year.

The entire system can be up and running for less than $3,000, according to David Enabnit, technical director of the Office of Coast Survey. "You could go to any computer store and get your computer, and your high school son could set the program up," he said.

"The real advantage is real-time positioning," Enabnit added. "There are also voyage-planning features and off-track alarms."

Rasters are currently used by the Navy, Coast Guard, NOAA and on many boats in the workboat industry. However, although easy to use and highly accurate, they aren't recognized yet by the Coast Guard as a primary tool for navigation. Coast Guard regulations require that up-to-date paper charts be aboard a vessel as a backup.

NOAA is also moving ahead with developing digital, electronic vector charts. Unlike rasters, which provide an exact picture of the area being navigated, each vector chart is backed up by a database that will provide additional information and offer better links with radars and other shipboard systems. The digitalization of data will also make vectors more accurate than rasters, NOAA said.

Vectors intended for deep-draft, commercial vessels will allow a ship's navigation system to provide warnings and information that is based on the ship's particular characteristics. For example, depending on the vessel's draft, the system will indicate areas that would be dangerous to transit.

Because of cost considerations, NOAA is initially concentrating on the nation's 100 most-heavily trafficked ports. These vector charts will be available early next year for a yet-to-be-determined price.

Plans are also under way to put the inland river system on vector charts. Data will be taken from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other sources.

"There's a big need for charts that are kept up to date, because there's a large amount of changes on [the Mississippi River] and a big amount of traffic," said the chief of the Corps Marine Chart Division, Capt. David B. MacFarland.

Navigation on the rivers is now done mostly with outdated paper charts prepared by the Corps. "The vector chart will give mariners on the rivers access to piloting and navigation information they didn't have in the past," MacFarland said.

REGULAR DELIVERY

Another program being developed by NOAA will allow mariners to receive new nautical paper charts almost immediately after they are updated by government cartographers.

With the Print-on-Demand program, NOAA will update digital files of all its 1,000 paper charts each week. They will contain a wide range of new information that mariners are required by the Coast Guard to carry - from buoy-position changes to dredging activities.

Heavily trafficked areas, such as the Gulf of Mexico ports, will be updated more frequently than other areas. NOAA expects to update charts for the Port of Galveston, Texas, for example, more than 30 times annually.

Mariners will deal directly with an agent that sells the nautical charts. The agent will establish a personal "profile," in which a list of the mariner's most-used charts will be kept on file. A mariner can also specify if he wants the chart to contain specific routing data and waypoints.

"We'll be able to customize the charts," said Enabnit.

He said NOAA will soon seek a private company to enter into a partnership with the government to handle the chart files, make the images, update the information, and then print the charts and distribute them to 1,300 retail agents. He expects the new service to be introduced by the end of the year.

The quality of the paper the charts are printed on is slightly inferior to that used for regular nautical charts, and the colors aren't as vibrant. But the information is clear and easily readable. Estimated cost per chart will be between $10 and $14.

The program has already been successfully tested on two Coast Guard cutters and two tugs operating in the Delaware Bay area.

NOAA said the new service will make navigation safer, because mariners will have better, more timely and accurate information on hand. The agency also hopes that the new service will boost its chart sales, which have been sagging lately, largely due to competition from the British Admiralty Service. Its charts sell for between $26 and $32 and are popular because the retail agent adds the latest changes at the time of sale.

"We want to take the business back with a better product," Enabnit said. "We'll be the first in the world to offer a print-on-demand service."

SURVEY MONEY NEEDED

Though important to improving navigation, none of these initiatives will remedy a basic problem: NOAA charts are in dire need of revision. Some 60 percent of its nautical charts are based on decades-old hydrographic data taken from surveys performed before 1940.

Of the 3,4 million square nautical miles to be surveyed nationwide, NOAA said that 43,000 square nautical miles of critical areas - waters that are shallow and heavily used by large ships - do not have accurate, up-to-date charts. The NOAA fleet can survey about 1,100 square nautical miles a year. At that rate, it would take 30 years to complete the work - and many more years after that before all the charts were updated.

Budget cuts over the past 15 years are mostly to blame. Congress is now looking at the problem.

"It's true that our ability to collect information is behind our ability to get it out to the mariners," Enabnit said, referring to how advances in computer technology have far outpaced the more tedious but important process of sending NOAA ships out to survey depths, ports and shorelines for obstructions. "There's a joke around here that we can get you a chart every 60 minutes that is 50 years old."

But Enabnit said that the updated information that is provided on charts is critical for navigation, and that surveying progress is being made.

"I'm not at all apologetic about fixing the charting problem first. It's within our grasp, and we're moving on it," he said. "Sometimes all improvements don't appear simultaneously."

Revised Friday January 31 2003by OCS Webmaster