In July 2004, EAHC littoral member states China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand formed a SCS ENC Task Group (SET) to carry out ENC production. Membership was on a voluntary basis and all EAHC MSs eagerly nominated representatives to participate in the task group. The SET was given a tight schedule to accomplish all production assignments and the EAHC had laid down fundamental principles for SCS ENCs:
- SCS ENCs were to be used for safety of navigation and research purposes
- copyright of the SCS ENCs would rest with the EAHC
- SCS ENCs would be available free of charge to all EAHC MSs, countries in the region and users. They should not be for commercial use unless permitted by the EAHC.
Paper charts produced by littoral Member States of the EAHC and other countries outside the region cover the SCS, and the same authorities have produced large-scale ENCs covering their own waters and major ports. A number of paper-charts ranging from a scale of 1:200,000 to 1:1,250,000, plus ENCs produced by the littoral MSs, were used as source data. The most up-to-date data was chosen for the production process, with surveys conducted as recently as 2003. Member states had generously shared with the EAHC copyright on the data depicted from these paper-charts and ENCs.
Freely Available
It was the view that if the SCS ENCs could be made freely and widely available to mariners this would further enhance safety of navigation in the region. This in turn could reduce the chances of environmental damage from grounding and oil pollution, disasters with tremendous cost impact. This was the underlying reason for the Commission deciding to provide the information free of charge. The SET nominated its leader and co-ordinator and the work began promptly in September 2004. Tasks were shared among all the members and the group met three times to resolve all technical problems. The ENCs produced went through various stages of checks and quality assurance by group members; this involved using ENC QC software as well as manual comparison of paper-chart information against the digital product. Cross-checking of products by several members had improved the quality substantially and much experience was thus gained and exchanged.
Sea Trials
The draft version of the SCS ENC was ready for trial at the end of December 2004. Three shipping lines (OOCL, NOL and SINOKOR) showed great interest, and more than eight ships trading in the region joined the trial. These ships were equipped with ECDIS from various manufacturers and they helped to test out the SCS ENCs and gave positive feedback. The sea-trial results enabled fine-tuning of the ENC. It also highlighted a lack of medium-scale ENCs when these ships approached ports covered only by large-scale ENCs. It would obviously be unsafe for users to change over to charts with a very large difference in scale; this encouraged MSs to consider putting out onto the market medium-scale ENCs sooner than originally planned.
Future Updates
Mariners have always welcomed the advantage of the speedy and much more frequent updating of ENCs by electronic means. Whether or not this could be achieved has always depended greatly upon the communication equipment onboard, efficient support from shore-based ship management and sometimes the constraints of the ECDIS. Such an advantage of frequent updating was further confirmed and welcomed by the ships’ masters joining the sea trial. It was decided that SCS ENCs would be updated at monthly intervals, and possibly more frequently when needed. The main objective of producing small-scale ENCs for the SCS was to provide mariners with the most up-to-date chart information for voyage planning and safety of navigation in the SCS.
Third-party Distribution
The SCS ENC was officially launched on 31st March 2005 and is posted on the website www.scsenc.org.hk for download. EAHC MSs can distribute the ENCs by means of their own choice, such as by CD-ROM or posting on a website. We are aiming at widespread distribution and third parties such as Hydrographic Offices outside the region, chart agents and ENC centres like Primar Stavanger and IC-ENC are encouraged to distribute SCS ENCs. However, these third parties need to obtain distribution permission from the EAHC and they should not charge their customers for the charts.
Concluding Remarks
The SCS ENC was the first joint EAHC project involving all MSs and the work was successfully completed according to the tight schedule given. Without active contribution, full co-operation and great effort on the part of all SET members this common goal would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, as would timely accomplishment of all the tasks involved. Positive feedback from mariners has reaffirmed the benefits of using SCS ENCs for navigational and planning purposes in the region. The excellent co-operation between all EAHC MSs in this task is thus amply rewarded. |
