The development will be headed by NMD, with help from the Norwegian Hydrographic Service (NHS) and Electronic Chart Centre AS (ECC). The project aims to have a prototype service available during the spring of 2008.
The goal of the system is to enable inspectors from the directorate, which is responsible for port state control inspections in Norway, to assess if a vessel is using official ENC data and if its charts are up-to-date.
Chart provider Primar, part of the NHS, notes that a number of inspection authorities have expressed a growing interest in learning more about the new service and about Norway's experience with establishing and implementing it.
The project intends to revise current inspection procedures applied in Norway to verify that updated official ENC/SENC data are being used for navigation.
