CoastGIS'99: geomatics and coastal environment
This is quite a shift in thinking for most chart makers and requires that
they thus develop new paradigms.
The mariner is never able, as we were once entreated by Cervantes’ Don
Quixote, to “journey all over the universe in a map, without the expense
and fatigue of travelling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat,
cold, hunger and thirst”. Chart makers need to come out from the
comfort of their offices and start to experience some of the “heat, cold,
hunger and thirst” of the real world as they make their charts.
An interesting issue for the cartographers engaged in ENC production
is the increasing use of databased information such as lights, buoys,
boundaries, text, photographs, attribute management, tomes and on.
The actual compilation process is requiring compilers to focus more on
the actual bathymetry and the construction of bathymetric polygons.
When the aim is to include isobaths at metre or sub-metre interval,
then the subsequent polygonisation is, to say the least, challenging. Overkill? Hardly, when increasingly mariners are demanding greater and
greater detail and accuracy in order to rationalise their loads to minimum underkeel clearances m critically sensitive areas such as the GBR.
The challenges for quality assurance and control are immense and are
being faced as opportunities each day!
The present IHO specifications have been designed to a large extent from
a cartographic perspective. To that extent they are limiting. However,
future (decade plus?) improvements will ultimately see precise interaction between dynamic data (ship’s draught, tidal models, ice edges,
weather, for example) and the databased chart information and tolerances
between the go/no go margin will shrink. Thus cartographers need to
be far reaching in their present day mind sets as they focus on production
issues.
A dilemma between the need for certainty in our specifications and
processes and the need for innovation and flexibility is continuously
present. Notions of “multi-fuelling” with various data sources, in itself
a rational and transitional option, forces compromise and stifles creativity and innovation.
When marine cartographers deliver a paper chart the medium is very
much the message. Rigicl and generalised in presentation, the presentation could be said to conform to the principle that “one size fits all”!
The advent of digital data separates the medium from the message in
that the message to the mariner must come v'ta an electronic chart system, or ECDIS. This has spawned a number of Faustian relationships
between HOS and manufacturers with few clear lines of demarcation in
respective roles. This is clearly part of the development conundrum,
but as progress is made there are signs that the market place is better
realising proper roles for authorized government agencies and the
commercial imperatives of system manufacture.
144
This is quite a shift in thinking for most chart makers and requires that
they thus develop new paradigms.
The mariner is never able, as we were once entreated by Cervantes’ Don
Quixote, to “journey all over the universe in a map, without the expense
and fatigue of travelling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat,
cold, hunger and thirst”. Chart makers need to come out from the
comfort of their offices and start to experience some of the “heat, cold,
hunger and thirst” of the real world as they make their charts.
An interesting issue for the cartographers engaged in ENC production
is the increasing use of databased information such as lights, buoys,
boundaries, text, photographs, attribute management, tomes and on.
The actual compilation process is requiring compilers to focus more on
the actual bathymetry and the construction of bathymetric polygons.
When the aim is to include isobaths at metre or sub-metre interval,
then the subsequent polygonisation is, to say the least, challenging. Overkill? Hardly, when increasingly mariners are demanding greater and
greater detail and accuracy in order to rationalise their loads to minimum underkeel clearances m critically sensitive areas such as the GBR.
The challenges for quality assurance and control are immense and are
being faced as opportunities each day!
The present IHO specifications have been designed to a large extent from
a cartographic perspective. To that extent they are limiting. However,
future (decade plus?) improvements will ultimately see precise interaction between dynamic data (ship’s draught, tidal models, ice edges,
weather, for example) and the databased chart information and tolerances
between the go/no go margin will shrink. Thus cartographers need to
be far reaching in their present day mind sets as they focus on production
issues.
A dilemma between the need for certainty in our specifications and
processes and the need for innovation and flexibility is continuously
present. Notions of “multi-fuelling” with various data sources, in itself
a rational and transitional option, forces compromise and stifles creativity and innovation.
When marine cartographers deliver a paper chart the medium is very
much the message. Rigicl and generalised in presentation, the presentation could be said to conform to the principle that “one size fits all”!
The advent of digital data separates the medium from the message in
that the message to the mariner must come v'ta an electronic chart system, or ECDIS. This has spawned a number of Faustian relationships
between HOS and manufacturers with few clear lines of demarcation in
respective roles. This is clearly part of the development conundrum,
but as progress is made there are signs that the market place is better
realising proper roles for authorized government agencies and the
commercial imperatives of system manufacture.
144