As it Is

Like all other Hydrographic Offices (HOs) and, indeed, most organisations we are living in very challenging and motivating times, demanding redefinition of processes and products to keep pace with the tremendous technical progress over the last decade. But in few areas have the potential changes such a wide impact as they have in hydrography.

Satellites and multibeam echo sounders are changing our surveyors’ lives by providing them with precise absolute positions in three dimensions and complete coverage. New methods and procedures have been, and are being, gradually defined and standardised for better safety. The use of higher resolution data for purposes other than navigation, such as environmental modelling and planning, have also to be accommodated. In addition, we must accept the observed constraint that imprecision in positions and gaps in coverage are less and less accepted by navigators, by the authorities and by the public in general, thus increasing the demand on HOs.

All processes are going digital nowadays, and automation is certainly favourable to the increase of productivity and of safety, provided it is well designed and well applied. This is a far from trivial matter: from survey ship to the bridge of the average navigating ship, hydrographic information goes through a chain of systems and databases in which there must be no weak link - and there are an increasing number of new links. The new capacities of this chain offer powerful functions that increase safety, but they also present new kinds of risks which must be harnessed.

The generic answer to this challenge is quality over two different fields of application: in the survey and production processes, where there are few standards, the quality of the SHOM system is being continually improved and ISO 9000 certification is prepared; in the distribution and transmission processes, standardisation and certification of systems and equipment must be exhaustive. Such certification is in France, as in most countries, the domain of maritime authorities. This looks simple, but one has to add the factor of the newness of the problems, meaning that very few (if any) existing solutions exist for comparable problems. There is also the difficulty in precise delineation of responsibilities.

In this complex environment, SHOM is happy to have achieved a good chain of processes for ENCs. This it has done with the help of PRIMAR Stavanger and its partners. In addition to its technical qualities, this organisation has the further merit of being based on official arrangements under public law, thus being fully compliant with the new SOLAS chapter V regulations.

The same kind of effort remains to be made on behalf of other nautical documents. This task is obviously felt by most partners to be of less importance and probably also less complex, but this has not been proved and the conditions for full and safe digital hydrographic information for the mariner are still to be defined.

Whilst at the same time we have to keep on doing it on paper.

What a wonderful busy future!