"IC-ENC aims to provide services, at a low cost, to national Hydrographic Offices that ensure their ENCs are compliant to the international standards, consistent across the global dataset, and readily available for use. This is so that shipping can navigate safely, efficiently and confidently, whilst ensuring other maritime users are using the same approved data"

Who is IC-ENC?

The International Centre for ENCs (IC-ENC) is a low cost, not for profit organisation which was set up in 2002 with a remit to assist ENC Producers in harmonising the production and distribution of high quality ENCs. This is achieved through ENC validation and distribution processes, always with the mariner in mind. IC-ENC is a Regional ENC Coordinating Centre (RENC), which supports the IHO Worldwide Electronic Navigational Chart Database (WEND) principles. It has four office sites across the globe.

IC-ENC provides four main services to each member HO:

• ENC Production Support
• ENC Validation
• ENC Distribution
• ENC Revenue Management

Who are the current members of IC-ENC?

IC-ENC current has over 40 members, with new members joining on a regular basis. Please see the Membership page for more information.

Where are the IC-ENC Offices located

IC-ENC has four offices located in different areas of the world:

• IC-ENC UK (HQ) - based in Taunton, UK
• IC-ENC Australia - based in Wollongong, Australia
• IC-ENC Latin America - based in Niteroi, Brazil
• IC-ENC North America - based in Washington, USA

For more information about the IC-ENC regional offices,
please see the IC-ENC regional offices page.

How is IC-ENC funded?

IC-ENC is a low cost, not for profit organisation which is financed out of ENC sales. IC-ENC's costs are recovered by retaining a 'fixed fee' per sale of each ENC subscription. The 'fixed fee' amount is decided by the Steering Committee, based upon costs and sales forecasts. Once the 'fixed fee' is set for the year ahead, each IC-ENC member is free to set its own wholesale ENC price. This way, IC-ENC members know for certain how much revenue they will receive for each ENC subscription sold. The 'fixed fee' currently stands at US$0.50 for a 12 month subscription, which is reduced pro rata for shorter periods, for example a 3 month subscription is US$0.15.

Why is IC-ENC important?

Each government is now responsible for ENC coverage of the waters under its national jurisdiction. Under the a guiding framework of international standards, each office is able to derive its own ENC cell schema; to define its approach to populating and encoding the ENC data for display; and to determine its methods for distributing the ENC data. IC-ENC's experience from studying and working with ENC data from over 40 member producers has shown that many different approaches to scheming, populating, encoding and distributing ENCs have already been adopted by the international HO community. Therefore, close cooperation between the various HOs is essential to the whole ENC concept. This is why IC-ENC focuses on providing coordination and standardisation services at both regional and international levels. By operating within a harmonised quality and distribution framework, IC- ENC members effectively avoid these problems.

Documents

Annual Report 2017

IC-ENC RENC Description Document

PRIMAR RENC Description

The format of the RENC description documents allows an easy comparison between the two RENC models, and provides a high level description of the operation, governance and finances of the organisations.