1. Creating a GIS from NOAA Electronic Navigational Charts
James Hawks and Matthew Austin
NOS Office of Coast Survey Coast Survey Development Lab

2. Introduction Background-- Nautical Charts, ENCs, S-57
ENC Direct to GIS Website
Users
Benefits
Web Services
Future Direction
Conclusion

3. What is a Nautical Chart?
A graphic depiction of the marine environment

4. Nautical Charts Show: Nature and form of the coast
General configuration of the sea bottom
Water depths
Aids to navigation
Topographic aids to support navigation
Used primarily as tool for safe navigation

5. Chart Suite Coverage ~1000 charts

6. Navigation Product: Electronic Navigational Charts
Electronic Navigational Charts (ENC) are databases of chart features used by navigation systems to produce a chart-like display.

7. What is S-57?
International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) for Transfer Standard for Digital Hydrographic Data
Uses International Standard Organization (ISO) 8211 file format
Platform independent structure
Provides a standard catalog for chart features
ENC is a product specification for S-57

8. S-57 Object Catalog Chart features belong to object classes
Over 180 object classes defined
Each object has set of descriptive attributes
Object classes encoded as acronyms
Attributes encoded as acronyms and enumeration
Includes attribute data types and value domains

9. Using ENCs in GIS
Rich structure of the object catalog requires the use of data decoders to make sense of information contained in S-57
Off the shelf GIS software packages do not support ENC in native S-57 format
S-57 standard is complex and hard to fully integrate in GIS

10. ENC Direct: The GIS Solution

11. ENC Direct Provides NOAA ENC data as online GIS
Uses ESRI ArcIMS internet mapping service
Data is available for download in GIS multiple formats through Spatial Direct online data transformation
Download can be customized to fit user requirements
Large Scale ENCs currently available
Updated monthly to include new coverage and ENC updates

12. NOAA ENC data conversion
Safe Software’s Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) used for data conversion
Custom translation developed in house
Converts S-57 to shapefile and ArcSDE
Chart features are merged together to create seamless GIS layers from NOAA ENCs

13. GIS layers of aggregated nautical features covering US waters
Contiguous information about Nautical Chart features available in GIS layers
Example: ENC Direct coastline layer contains information from 400 ENCs of the same scale that have been glued together
Over 200 GIS layers available

14. ENC Direct to GIS
Layers have been symbolized to give a chart like display
S-57 object classes have been organized into meaningful groups based on ESRI’s S-57 data model
Layers have scale dependency to improve performance. Layers are only visible at a particular scale

15. Data Download Choose data format, and spatial extent Zoom in
Select Data
Data is clipped, zipped and shipped

16. Benefits
Streamlines and expands access to NOAA ENC data for non-navigational use
Visualization of NOAA ENCs online
Access to multiple cohesive chart features-Soundings, Shipwrecks, Harbors, Marine Sanctuaries, Coastline, Landmarks

17. Web Services Web Map Services and Web Feature Services
Eliminate need for data download
Data can be view directly through desktop GIS clients (ESRI clients only at the moment) and stacked with other web services

18. ENC Direct Web Service viewed in ArcMap

19. ENC Direct Architecture
Web Server: Windows 2003, Apache, Tomcat, ArcIMS 9.1, Spatial Direct
Data Server: Red Hat Linux, ArcSDE 9.1, Oracle 10g

20. Users USGS National Map US Coast Guard Homeland Security
Coastal Managers
Coastal Engineers
Marine Modelers
State and Local Government
Private Sector

21. Conclusion ENC Direct to GIS expands access and usage of NOAA ENCs
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