Background

Why this project was initiated

Norway is world leading in many areas of the maritime industry. A goal for The Norwegian Hydrographic Service (NHS) is to enhance safety at sea by making maritime geographical information available to all users of Norway’s costal and marine areas.

Norway is the operator for PRIMAR, an international partnership for the quality assurance and delivery of Electronic Navigational Charts (ENC). These charts are produced and delivered in accordance with IHO’s (International Hydrographic Office) international standards.

The IHO is working on several new maritime product standards in the S-100 portfolio, for bathymetric data this is called S-102, or Standard 102. Detailed bathymetric data has been requested from many maritime user groups for several years.

Bathymetric S-102 data will be a basis for new, innovative developments for safe navigation and navigational planning. Other areas of application such as data analysis, planning, safety and rescue operations will benefit from the use of these new standardised datasets.

Advancing the opportunities inherent in the application of high resolution bathymetric data is dependent on the interplay of four key factors: 1) the availability of high resolution data supporting the generation of standardised data sets, 2) the completion of an international standard, S-102, 3) a distribution model for making the new data type commercially available and 4) available end user systems demonstrating the value of the enhanced (S-102) data.

The basis for this project has been to bring together representatives from the major stakeholder communities in order to demonstrate the full value chain of the new S-102 data.