MAIN HEAD The UK Hydrographic Office DECK HEAD Digital Ship interviews Dr Wyn Williams, chief executive of the UK Hydrographic Office, to ask how UKHO will maintain its dominance in the electronic chart era BACKGROUND The UK Hydrographic Office, which produces the British Admiralty paper charts, has a 70 per cent market share in supplying paper charts to the international merchant marine. An Indonesian shipping company with vessels around the coast of Japan will probably be using British Admiralty paper charts. But UKHO is likely to have a tougher time in the electronic chart era. "70 per cent of all world paper charts in merchant marine come from Taunton," says Dr Wyn Williams, UKHO chief executive. "That's a tremendous position to be in. The digital world will not be like that at all." "Many others provide electronic charts - industry as well as hydrographic offices." "We'll be in competition - we'll be in there fighting." "We've got a fairly interesting transition to make to bring in a position of world dominance." SUBHEAD Admiralty Plus UKHO's proposed vehicle to maintain its dominance will be dubbed "Admiralty Plus", an equivalent service to its British Admiralty paper charts, but for electronic charts and services. Admiralty Plus will be more of an ongoing service than a product - making sure that ships have the up to date chart data they need for the voyage they are on, with possibilities for add-on data services, such as weather information, lists of lights and tides. "We still think that shipping companies will want a one stop shop," he says. "Its not a done deal yet. It will take a year or two to get there." This will be very different to the paper chart business, which is geared around specific products which are sold by UKHO by networks of agents. UKHO will be able to be versatile in how shipping companies pay for the service; a pay as you go contract, where shipping companies pay by the day rather than per each individual chart, would be feasible. UKHO will control and own the service, but it is not planning to create all the elements of the service itself. "We intend international collaboration and joint ventures, with partners we are negotiation with," he says. "This includes software and communications people." SUBHEAD Distributing ENCs UKHO currently has around 47 bilateral agreements with other hydrographic offices, which state that they can publish each other's charts subject to royalty payments - it is pursuing similar bilateral agreements in the electronic chart era. Hydrographic offices will have the option of distributing their ENCs via UKHO's own "Regional ENC co-ordination centre" (RENC), or distribute them to UKHO directly, as South Africa does. "We've set up IC-ENC in Taunton," says Dr Williams. "9 -10 nations are involved in that. "It does a final quality check. IC-ENC is a last gasp, to check the edge matching. Its not involved in the content of the chart. The system of RENCs stems from an agreement made at a 1992 International Hydrographic Organisation meeting, following a proposal by Norway, that a World Electronic Chart Database (WEND) would be created, controlled and owned by no individual country, with each country making their own ENC charts, and a network of RENCs (regional ENC co-ordinating centres) checking the quality and matching the boundaries. In 1999, UK and Norway set up a RENC in Norway called Primar, but 4 years later UKHO pulled out, citing its "unsatisfactory financial basis," and set up its own RENC, IC-ENC, at its offices in Taunton, whilst Primar was renamed Primar Stavanger and continued to be operated by the Norwegian Hydrographic Office. UKHO has not yet been allowed to distribute ENCs which are distributed through Primar Stavanger, including Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Russia, Singapore and Sweden. "At the moment UKHO is not a distributor of Primar," he says. "Its a technical difference between us. I don't think it's one of the Norwegians not wanting us to deal with their charts. Its not insurmountable." "There's a different concept between Primar and IC-ENC in how they distribute the charts," he says. "The ENCs will leave Primar encrypted. When they leave IC-ENC they will be protected but the VARs can encrypt them." SUBHEAD Surveys and cartography UKHO stresses that making surveys and creating charts ("cartography") will remain one of the organisation's core competences. "The core expertise o the organisation isn't going to change, providing the data that's going to reside in the database," he says. UKHO will continue producing charts and updates for its "crown dependencies waters", covering the UK and Ireland. It also plans to make agreements with other countries, which may not have the same survey capacity, to do their surveys. "We are one of the prime ENC producing nations," he says. "We can fill in some of the gaps [in ENC coverage]." SUBHEAD The UK Navy The primary reason for UKHO's existence is to provide hydrographic data to the British Royal Navy, not to make money or serve the international merchant fleet. Late last year the Royal Navy announced that it was going to start implementing electronic chart systems on its vessels. "The Navy is pretty much paper chart orientated," says Dr Williams. "It has a contract to convert half the navy ships to ECDIS." The Navy will be subject to the same regulations as merchant ships, he says. "They will use raster charts, they will carry the backup paper charts. They undertake the same carriage requirements." Unlike merchant ships, the Navy will also have access to an electronic chart format developed by the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) called Digital Nautical Charts. "The only time I would imagine they would want to use DNCs is if they are coming in a convoy behind US navy ships," he says. "DNCs - they are not for sale to the general public, due to IPR [royalty] issues." SUBHEAD ENCs and raster UKHO is very clear that it sees its raster charts, exactly the same as paper charts but displayed on a screen, as an interim solution, so ships can get some of the advantages of electronic charts while they wait for worldwide coverage of ENC vector charts. "In due course the world will be covered by ENC vector charts," he says. "We don't expect people to use raster forever. The final product should be ENCs of the world." "ENCs cover the beginning of a route, the end of a route," says Dr Williams. "But there's a lot of sea in the middle." "We have the only world coverage of raster charts," Dr Williams says. "This is something [mariners] like. We sell a reasonable amount. We think raster charts are good enough." Dr Williams addresses the criticisms that have been made about raster charts. He notes that raster charts are exactly the same as paper charts; if paper charts are good enough for navigation then raster charts should also be; Addressing criticism that they are not as good at vector charts at displaying at large scales, he points out that ENCs should not be displayed at large scales either. "Most of the world's ENCs are from digitised paper charts," Dr Williams says. "You shouldn't zoom in more than on a paper chart." It is also misleading to think that vector charts have better survey data than the paper charts; most vector charts are made from paper charts, he says. SUBHEAD SENC UKHO also has plans to develop a SENC product, which converts the raw ENC data into a format which, according to some, runs much more reliably and easily onboard ships, and has smaller file sizes. Most SENC formats developed so far are proprietary (owned by specific companies). Getting software installed on shipboard ECDIS geared towards reading charts in your proprietary SENC format is seen by some as a means of controlling, and ultimately being able to maximise margins, in the electronic chart distribution chain. C-MAP has already been very successful in getting chart display software which can read its proprietary SENC format installed on many ships; UKHO would like to do likewise. "SevenCs, they have got a SENC product which is a good product," says Dr Williams. "The sort of thing we will look at in the future." SUBHEAD ECDIS carriage requirements The UK has no plans to require that ECDIS is being carried on its own flag ships and ships in UK waters. However it is supporting proposals currently being prepared for IMO by Norway to mandate ECDIS carriage on certain sea areas and on certain ships.