As we all know, hydrography means different things to different people, even amongst our readership. For example, physical oceanographers see it as measuring and describing the physical characteristics of the water column and those involved in safety of navigation (traditional hydrography) think more in terms of measuring water depths (bathymetry), tides, currents. The military, meanwhile, are more interested in sound propagation aspects like salinity, temperature and acoustic properties of both bottom and water column.
This variety of users, usage and interpretation also renders a variety of charts: the traditional nautical chart, dynamic ENCs varying with height of tide, rainbow-coloured 3D images, obliques, stereoscopic charts etc. Despite the fact that traditional hydrographic data is increasingly used for other purposes such as engineering, coastal zone management and scientific purposes, articles submitted to us concentrate on the production of nautical charts and ENCs. Does this reflect the interest of our readership in chart production and, implicitly, the present (capacity) problem in getting hydrographic data to the user, or are we just focused on transforming proven procedures to use digital techniques? Looking back at our Product Survey on Mapping Software (April ’05), a question along the lines of ‘What products other than maps can your software produce?’ would perhaps have been appropriate.
Question: Who dares to submit an article giving a creative look ahead to forecast what cartography will look like 25 years from now? It would be interesting to speculate on, for instance, the forms in which data will be presented to the user. Producing ‘charts’ is one thing - but is the user getting what he wants and is he willing to pay for it? Developments in chart production require investment in new technology. When it comes to nautical charts, some data owners in the public domain want to recover (part of) the production investment or even surveying costs and are arguing that ‘charts are cheap’. Others are giving the data for free (see for example this month’s article by NG Kwok-chu on the ‘South China Sea ENC’) and Austria’s InlandECDIS policy (www.
via-donau.org). For myself, I well remember the answer of Captain Wilson Chua, until recently the Hydrographer of Singapore, when I enquired about price as he handed over to me a CD of Singapore ENCs some years ago: "I see it as an honour if mariners are using my data and it is a contribution to safety in our waters."
In general, both professional (shipping companies) and recreational users find charts expensive, and the recreational user in particular is seeking and finding ways of illegal copying. One question to be addressed by governments in the pricing dilemma is this: Is the risk of, for instance, an environmental disaster related to the non-use of adequate ‘charts’ worth the ‘profit’ made on their sales?

Hydrographic chart production (the theme of this issue) is not limited to ‘salt water’. The InlandECDIS standard is contributing to safe and efficient inland waterway navigation and it is good to note signs that the standard is growing into a worldwide standard for inland-river navigation. Within Europe more and more chart data is becoming available in this InlandECDIS standard, for example, from the Balkan states.