ECDIS Implementation Needs More Work
About 60 delegates attended the conference titled ‘The E-navigation Revolution’ which was held on 11 and 12 November 2014 onboard the HQS Wellington in London, UK. Nick Lambert, former National Hydrographer of the UKHO, chaired the event, during which speakers and participants focused on various developments within e-navigation. One conclusion was that a lot of work still needs to be done if the implementation deadline in 2017 is to be met. Other areas which require attention include data, communications, the interface and interaction between stakeholders.
First to take to the floor was Futurenautics editor Kate Adamson talking about the future in shipping which leads to autonomous shipping. The navigational aspects of this movement was of interest of the audience but she also highlighted economical aspects as autonomous ships may save 40% on the operations and potentially change the business model of shipbuilding and operations. This impressive glimpse into the future was followed by a contribution by Mark Nicholson of the University of York on organisational aspects of the monitoring navigator – especially the application security of it. Eric Styhr Peterson continued on this track digging into aspects of human-centredness of the e-navigation systems.
Peter Blackhurst of INMARSAT presented the developments from the communications and data transmission perspective as this is a challenge, especially looking at updates and the technical possibilities to arrange automatic updates.
John Klippen spent some time on the interests of stakeholders with their respective links. The day continued quite technical with Nick Lemon of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority on the data and system architecture on board and a presentation of Capt. Sriram Rajagopal on implementation aspects. Training aspects are important, as Harry Gale of the Nautical Institute emphasised.
The Project Mona Lisa is a frontrunner on new developments in the ECDIS and e-navigation world, and Mikael Hagg gave an insight on the status achieved. One aspect, the options to sail and update using ECDIS and ENCs was further elaborated by Tor A. Svanes of NAVTOR.
Day 2 of the conference was more hands-on regarding the presentations with Bob Cockshott of the Knowledge Transfer Network explaining how vulnerable a GNSS reception may be especially regarding the possibilities to jam it, intentionally or using a device. Dr Andy Norris dug deeper in this matter.
Then charting aspects came into play during the presentation of Roger Barker of Trinity House. There are new risks that are charted and he showed examples of wind farms and the Varne Bank on ECDIS systems and how mariners navigate in reality. William Heaps took the hydrographic perspective by taking the audience into a practical harbour situation where bigger ships have to manoeuvre and made all aware of the surveying, charting and navigational aspects related to it as well as the organisations that contribute from the start of a survey to the final docking of a vessel. Quite continuing on this practical aspect Tom Mellor of the UKHO presented updating and revisions of the ECDIS systems and challenges that this includes.
After these contributions, the delegates spent time in round-table discussions which were evaluated into conclusions.
The conference also showed an agreement to form a Special Interest group on e-Navigation, which would be hosted by IMarEST. The delegates were supporting this concept as this could reinforce the road towards further implementation and development of the technology.
