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

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

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

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

Chart Suite Coverage ~1000 charts

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

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

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

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

ENC Direct: The GIS Solution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ENC Direct Web Service viewed in ArcMap

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

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

Conclusion ENC Direct to GIS expands access and usage of NOAA ENCs For further information, contact: enc.gis@noaa.gov http://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/csdl/ctp/encdirect_new.htm