The Hamburg Navigation event was always designed to be interactive. The audience voting became a useful indicator of how they felt digital navigation was progressing. But crucially it gave them the opportunity to share their concerns too.
So how did the audience of owners and managers feel about Admiralty’s push from ‘protective navigation’ to ‘proactive navigation’ – 56% agreed they saw some benefits. But before we got ahead of ourselves, 47% said greater coverage of official ENCs was their top priority.
UKHO’s Hugh Phillips and Jason Scholey fielded a barrage of questions about AVCS and e-Navigator. Was this a way to reduce crew numbers by stealth? Could the data really be co-ordinated?
No to the first, said Phillips. e-Navigator provides the information but the decision always rests with the mariner and besides there were more than enough jobs to be done and crewing levels are already at permissible minimums. Yes to the second, because e-Navigator is designed to support back-of-bridge voyage planning, chart management and provide added value services.
It’s not a tool for navigation, but it allows mariners to have better data at their fingertips. The data in ENCs he said was present and correct but sometimes buried – e-Navigator was an attempt to make the process better.
What was more surprising was the response to some of the background issues. 43% of delegates agreed that e-navigation had the potential to increase efficiency and there was encouraging news about the communications infrastructure. Some 34% of delegates have already equipped their ships with broadband and 37% were planning to do so in five years.
But what would they like to change about ECDIS and ENCS? Well, coverage could still be improved, but more voted for this than for lower prices, more flexible licensing or better service delivery.
In a decade, Scholey said, the process of navigation, almost unchanged for centuries might be unrecognisable to mariners of 100 years ago. Based on the audience response, he might be right.
Tags: AVCS, e-navigation, e-Navigator, ECDIS, ENCs, UKHO
