Israel becomes 36th member of IC-ENC

IC-ENC welcomes Survey of Israel (SOI), which has become the 36th national Hydrographic Office to join the rapidly increasing family of members.

SOI currently has one ENC, and IC-ENC intends to provide close support in order to assist and develop its in-house ENC production capacity. This will be achieved through IC-ENC's Production Support, Independent Validation and Capacity Building (Training) services.

IC-ENC is looking forward to working in partnership with SOI and assisting in the development of this important ENC coverage.





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Steering Committee 16 - Discussion Papers

The Steering Committee 16 Discussion Papers are now available through the Hydrographic Offices area of this website.

To access and download the discussion papers, please go to the Hydrographic Offices area and log in using your username and password. Next, click on the 'SC16 Website' link to take you to the Steering Committee 16 homepage. The discussion papers can then be found within the 'SC16 Documents' folder on the homepage.

We are looking forward to seeing you all in September.


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New ENC Coverage for the Suez Canal

IC-ENC is excited to announce that the Egyptian Naval Hydrographic Department (ENHD) have produced their first 12 ENCs (10 Harbour and 2 Approach), which seamlessly cover the waters of the Suez Canal. IC-ENC has been working closely with ENHD to assist in the production of these new ENCs, both through attendance of the IC-ENC ENC Validation Training Course in February 2015, and through telephone and email support on a regular basis. ENHD have also been working in partnership with the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) to ensure that the release of these new ENCs align with the opening of the new and important 35km second channel within the Suez Canal on 6th August 2015. These ENCs will provide flexibility and usability at different scales throughout the whole canal.



The official opening took place at 15:00 local time on 6th August, which saw El Horreya, a Royal Egyptian yacht, take the first transit from south to north using the new channel. In the evening there was a performance of Aida, an opera written by Guiseppe Verdi, which was also performed at the original opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.

This is the greatest expansion of the canal since it first opened in 1869, costing $8 billion. The works involved 12 months of dredging using 45 dredgers, which has resulted in the removal of approximately 250 million cubic meters of soil. Previously a single lane, the canal can now facilitate traffic in two directions in almost 45% of its length, thus reducing transit time from 18 hours to 11 hours. As a result, waiting times have been minimised to just three hours, allowing the transit of 45 vessels in two directions, and increasing the maximum permissible vessel draft to 66ft throughout the canal.

With the daily average of transiting vessels expected to double, this important expansion of the Suez Canal will help to support and enhance increasing world trade.




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August

It's been another busy month for IC-ENC, with new staff members, various international meetings and visits, Steering Committee preparations, and no let up on the data front.

IC-ENC attended two Hydrographic Commissions this month. James attended the Mediterranean and Black Sea Hydrographic Commission meeting (MBSHC), held in Batumi, Georgia from 29th June - 2nd July. It was a productive meeting with good discussions regarding ENHD and IC-ENC's combined efforts on ENC production in the Suez Canal, and ENC scheming in the general area.



Subsequently, Richard Fowle attended the South East Pacific Hydrographic Commission meeting (SEPHC), held in Guayaquil, Ecuador from 13th – 16th July. Richard updated the commission on IC-ENC's capacity building initiatives, including the IC-ENC International Validation training course, and also on IC-ENC's revised policy regarding overlapping data and areas of responsibility. Richard also spent some time discussing new ENC production plans with Ecuador.

South East Pacific Hydrographic Commission (SEPHC 12) 13th - 16th July, Guayaquil, Ecuador

Dan Garratt, IC-ENC Data Validator, has recently gained promotion to IC-ENC Senior Data Validator following a successful interview. The main objectives of the IC-ENC Senior Data Validator role are to maintain the IC-ENC documentation which underpins the IC-ENC Production Support and ENC Validation services; carry out IC-ENC Production Support and Validation services when required; to achieve and maintain ISO9001 quality management certification for all IC-ENC operations across all IC-ENC offices; and to develop the culture of customer focus and continual improvement across the IC-ENC organisation.

This month, we also held a secondment for Gailen Helga Pietersen, an employee of the South African Navy Hydrographic Office (SANHO), from 6th – 10th July. Gailen spent her the first part of the week with Mike, IC-ENC Data Manager/IC-ENC Course Instructor, in order to familiarise her with IC-ENC's core services. Gailen then spent time with each member of the Validation team, who took her through the entire Validation process.

We were pleased to welcome Scott Drayton, our new IC-ENC Assistant Technical Manager, to the team on 20th July. Scott will be working in IC-ENC for a contracted period of 12 months to deliver improvements to IC-ENC services and information technology as defined in IC-ENC's Target Operating Model.

We were also delighted to welcome Dr. Mathias Jonas, IC-ENC Chairman and Hydrographer of the German Hydrographic Office (BSH), to IC-ENC HQ on Tuesday 28th July. Mathias spent the day discussing some of the agenda topics for the fast approaching Steering Committee16 meeting. In addition, Mathias was briefed on some of the ongoing projects within IC-ENC by individual members of the team.

Steering Committee 16 is approaching swiftly, and IC-ENC is currently working on the discussion papers for the meeting. All discussion papers will be circulated one month before the meeting takes place to allow delegates to familiarise themselves with the topics listed for discussion in the agenda. If you have not yet replied to your invitation, but you would like to attend, please send your travel form to me as soon as possible on laura.tyzack@ic-enc.org.

Shortly after Steering Committee 16, our third and final IC-ENC International Validation training course of 2015 will be taking place in Panama from 14th – 25th September. Mike, IC-ENC Course Instructor/IC-ENC Data Manager, is currently working hard to ensure all of the final arrangements for the course are under way for the 15 delegates who will be attending the training course in September.

Lastly, we are sad to inform you that Sidney Osborne has recently announced his retirement from his post at the South African Hydrographic Office (SANHO). We have been in correspondence with Sidney since IC-ENC was set up in 2002, with South Africa being one of IC-ENC's first members. Below are a few words from Sidney himself:

"IC-ENC and the South African Hydrographic Office have had a long and very fruitful relationship over the years, so I certainly will reflect warmly on the great times I've had with many of the IC-ENC members, past and present here in South Africa and abroad. Without singling out any members at IC-ENC, I would like to convey my best wishes to all who may remember me, and I hope they continue to enjoy their careers in the unique world of ENCs and IC-ENC. I am also that sure those who follow in my footsteps in the SANHO will also discover and experience first hand the good cordial manner in which IC-ENC provides the valuable service to its members".


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July

Some of you may have already seen and read the news announcement on the website regarding the development of a new regional office in Brazil, to be known as IC-ENC Latin America. This new office will be developed in partnership with the Directorate of Hydrography and Navigation (DHN), and will be located in the Niteroi offices of DHN, near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The initiative was approved by the IC- ENC Steering Committee following the near-unanimous results of a vote, and now IC-ENC and DHN will begin to develop the new regional office in line with the approved business case.

Mike has now settled back into the team after hosting the IC-ENC International Validation training course, which was held in Wollongong, Australia, from 25th May until 5th July. The course was a great success, with even more working relationships built and knowledge shared between nations. It was also a good opportunity to work closely with the IC-ENC Australia team, and in addition ex-IC- ENC Chairman, Rod Nairn, was there to present the certificates to the delegates at the end of the course.

IC-ENC International Validation training course delegates with Mike Hawes and the IC-ENC Australia team

Weekend day trip to Wollongong Zoo

James visited the offices of NOAA to discuss ENC production and validation concepts, before moving on to Mexico City to represent IC-ENC at the IHO’s IRCC7 meeting. WEND matters were discussed and James also formally announced IC- ENC's decision to launch the new regional office in Latin America. James then travelled to Panama City to visit the two ENC producing organizations. James visited the Panama Maritime Authority, who recently joined IC-ENC, to provide guidance on the next stages of ENC production. He then met with the IC- ENC contacts within the Panama Canal Authority, where he was shown the training facilities which have been made available for IC-ENC to deliver its International Validation training course in September. Following the return from this trip, James will be working towards the upcoming MBSHC meeting, which is to be held in Georgia between 30th June and 2nd July. He will then be concentrating on the preparation of discussion papers for Steering Committee 16 in September.

Last week's exchange set, on 26th June, was the largest exchange set of data that IC-ENC has ever validated and released. The exchange set contains a total of 269 files, including 226 updates, 41 new editions, and 2 new cells. This brings the total number of ENCs released by IC-ENC to 5,619. This is a stark contrast to last year, when the average number of ENC files issued per week was 131. A big well done to the team for their efforts!

As part of Kevin's last day in IC-ENC, we had a team building day out at Go Segway. For those of you who are not familiar with a segway, it is a two-wheeled, self-balancing, electric powered vehicle, and is the latest trend in 'green' transportation. During our segway safari tour, we took on obstacles, hills and sharp turns, and it quickly became apparent who was (and who was not!) a natural segway master. All in all, it was a great experience, and it was a good opportunity for the team to relax, enjoy themselves, and have a good laugh together.

IC-ENC team building day at Go Segway

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IC-ENC's largest ever weekly release of data!

This week, IC-ENC has validated and released the largest amount of ENC data since records began!

The exchange set contains a total of 269 files, including 226 updates, 41 new editions, and 2 new cells. This brings the total number of ENCs released by IC-ENC to 5,619. This is a stark contrast to last year, when the average number of ENC files issued per week was 131.

2015 has already been a busy six months in general for the IC-ENC Validation Team, supporting IC-ENC members in their ENC production and ENC maintenance responsibilities, in addition to various other office projects and tasks.

A big well done to the team for their efforts!


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IC-ENC Latin America Regional Office

IC-ENC is pleased to announce the development of a new regional office in Brazil to be known as IC-ENC Latin America. This new regional office will be developed in partnership with the Directorate of Hydrography and Navigation (DHN) and will be located in the Niterói offices of DHN, near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The governing board of IC-ENC, the IC-ENC Steering Committee, approved this new initiative via a vote. The result was a near-unanimous approval, therefore, IC- ENC and DHN will now begin to develop the new regional office in line with the approved business case.

The first stage is for IC-ENC to train DHN staff in the IC-ENC ENC quality assurance practices, who will then be considered 'on loan' to IC-ENC. The stringent IC-ENC requirements in terms of staff performance and competence will be reached during 2015, with the IC-ENC Latin America office achieving full operating capability in early 2016.

The primary reason for establishing IC-ENC Latin America is to provide localised ENC Production and Validation support to a significant portion of IC-ENC members in this region. Additional benefits are related to time zone in terms of a longer IC- ENC international working day and therefore improved response times to its customers, delivering support in the dominant regional language of Spanish, and enhancing the 'international' aspect of IC-ENC with the development of a global network. The new regional office will also allow IC-ENC to demonstrate the benefits of its new technology in terms of communication and workflow between offices, delivering enhanced services to its Hydrographic Office members and its Value Added Reseller ENC distribution partners.


Directorate of Hydrography and Navigation (DHN), Niteroi, Brazil


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June

We are now into the second week of the IC-ENC International Validation Training Course, which is currently being held in Australia. The delegates have spent the first week learning about IC-ENC's mission, aims and process, in addition to data supply and IC-ENC's internal software. The delegates then spent the weekend exploring Sydney and Wollongong, and getting to know each other better over a nice meal and a drink or two. The second week of the course will focus on data consistency, validation reports and the distribution of data.

The third training course to be held this year will take place in Panama. Initial invitations to attend the Panama course will be sent out this week. Please contact Mike Hawes at mike.hawes@ic-enc.org for further information, or if you have any questions.

The concept of providing ECDIS software to IC-ENC members was discussed and agreed at SC15, and so we have spent some time evaluating two options, TRANSAS and 7Cs, for functionality and cost benefit. As a result, the 7Cs eGlobe2 ECDIS has been selected for its ease of installation on office hardware, its performance for data quality assessment tasks, and its value for money.

Accordingly, IC-ENC has purchased 40 licenses for this software, for use in our offices and to supply to members. Familiarisation training will be delivered to delegates attending the Australia and Panama training courses, and they will return to their home organisations with software to install locally. The delegates who attended the UK training course in February will also be provided with the software, and guidance will be provided directly from IC-ENC as required. To provide further guidance and support for all members, IC-ENC has developed a comprehensive installation and user guide, alongside 7Cs, which focuses on data quality and data assessment.

Again, the dataflow within IC-ENC remains high, and as of week 22 we have now released a total of 5,577 ENCs. This number will continue to increase over the next couple of weeks as we validate and release 50 new cells produced by the Netherlands Hydrographic Office (NLHO).

We are pleased to announce that IC-ENC has appointed a new member of staff at the UK office, Ms Liz Hahessy. Liz has been appointed to prepare IC-ENC for future services and the changes that will be required to support our members as the S-100 suite of data standards develop, most notably the ENC Standard S-101. Liz will also contribute to other areas, in addition to providing cover to our business critical post of Technical Manager.

Liz's background is in Geography and Geology, having achieved a BSc in Geology from Cardiff University, as well as an MSc in Quaternary Science from the University of London. Following her academic studies, Liz went on to work for the Environment Agency as a Regulatory Water Quality Officer. Subsequently, she joined the UKHO in 2007 as a Mapping and Charting Officer in the VAR Team prior to the launch of AVCS (Admiralty Vector Chart Service). In 2009, Liz undertook the UKHO compilation training course, achieving IHO Cat B accreditation and then settling as a compiler in the Home Waters chart branch. In 2011, Liz became a DDMT (Digital Data Management Team) Manager, where she was responsible for acquiring and quality assessing ENC data from RENCs and FGHOs for inclusion in the weekly AVCS and AIO (Admiralty Information Overlay) service. This required a good working knowledge of IHO Standards, ECDIS systems and validation software tools such as Jeppesen's dKart Inspector and 7Cs ENC Analyzer. In this post, Liz was also involved in two major projects developing the CASTLE independent validation tool and Torus, which is due to replace the Moebius database. Liz was promoted to Digital Team Leader of the DDMT, AIO and RENC Liaison teams in January 2014, where she led, managed and supported the teams through UKHO restructure and process changes.

We are very much looking forward to working with Liz and welcoming her to the team!

As part of the staff structure review, and in order to realistically balance IC-ENC headcount and budget for staff costs, Mr Kevin Black, IC-ENC Assistant Technical Manager, will be transferring to the UKHO. The Assistant Technical Manager role is responsible for delivering IC-ENC's new technology and will cease upon completion, so this role will be filled by a short term secondment from the UKHO and specialist contractor skills.

Kevin has been with IC-ENC for over two years, and will be known to most of your teams as the first line of support for any technology queries such as data transfer account set up. He has also briefed the Steering Committee on IC-ENC technology, and has put in place the foundations on which our new technology will be built.

Kevin has always been a pleasure to work with, and we wish him the best of luck with the next stage of his career.


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May

I hope you all had a lovely Easter break, and you've returned feeling refreshed!

Firstly, a quick update on SC16. I will be starting to book flights for SC16 imminently, so if you have not yet returned your travel forms to me, please make every effort to do so as soon as possible. Please remember that IC-ENC has opted to pay for the travel and accommodation costs of one delegate per nation, so if you would like to send more than one delegate, the additional travel and accommodation costs must be met your organisation.

IC-ENC has had visits from several nations this month, including both some familiar faces from the Netherlands Hydrographic Office, and some new faces from the Myanmar Naval Hydrographic Centre and several Omani students who are currently on a two week training course at the UK Hydrographic Office. We hope all of our visitors enjoyed meeting and spending some time with the team, we certainly did!

The dataflow within IC-ENC remains at a high, and as a result, our total number of ENCs released now stands at 5,558 ENCs as of week 18.

For those producing nations using 7Cs ENC Analyzer, we'd like to bring to your attention the change in criteria which has resulted in the error message 'VS57_ATT_49' being reported in our validation work much more frequently. – you may have noticed in your validation reports! This has occurred since we have upgraded ENC Analyzer to version 3.3.1.218568. The error message reports that the mandatory attributes CATREA (category of restriction) and RESTRN (restriction) are missing for RESARE (restricted area).

Previously, the error would only be reported if both mandatory attributes were missing, but now the error will be reported even if one of the mandatory attributes has been populated. If this is the case, and one mandatory attribute has been populated, the error can be classified as 'erroneous', and no further action would be required. However, if both mandatory attributes are missing or left empty and there is no additional information about the nature of the restricted area in INFORM or TXTDSC, then the error will be classified as 'HO to correct'. To resolve the error, at least one of the mandatory attributes must be populated, or alternatively, if it is easier to describe the nature of the restricted area, then INFORM or TXTDSC can be populated.

We are now looking forward to the next IC-ENC International Validation training course, which is to be held in Wollongong, Australia from 25th May until 5th June, for a period of two weeks. There are now 12 confirmed delegates on the course, attending from Australia, Bahrain, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan and the Philippines. Mike Hawes, Course Instructor, is very much looking forward to meeting all of the delegates in Wollongong on 25th May.


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April

'Nobody can stop natural disaster, we are the cause and we are the remedy' – Santosh Kalwar

I'm sure that all of you are aware of the recent cyclone which hit Vanuatu on 13th March, causing much devastation to the chain of small South Pacific islands. Cyclone Pam, as it was named, has now been regarded as one of the most severe tropical cyclone disasters in the history of Vanuatu, and has resulted in the tragic loss of 16 lives. The majority of the damage lies with the capital of Port Vila, although other parts of the 65 inhabited islands have also been affected by the natural disaster. The United Nations have now confirmed that humanitarian aid has been delivered to all of the affected islands of the country, providing food packages and water for more than 166,000 people.

In order to further support the humanitarian aid being provided by the United Nations, as well as many other charity relief projects such as Oxfam, UNICEF, and the Australian Red Cross, IC-ENC will be releasing two up-to-date ENCs of Port Vila, produced by UKHO. These two ENCs are now available unencrypted and free of charge via the IC-ENC website, and will also be included in this week's exchange set.

On a separate note, James attended the North Indian Ocean Hydrographic Commission (NIOHC) meeting in Oman, which was held from 16th – 18th March. At the meeting, James delivered a joint presentation with Cdr. Ahmed Naguib from the Egyptian Navy Hydrographic Department (ENHD). The presentation provided an insight into ENHD's experiences of IC-ENC as a new member, and discussed IC- ENC's provision of services and production support to ENHD during the joining period.

The flow of data into IC-ENC remains high, with week 11 containing 239 individual ENC files, which makes it our largest exchange set since 2011. As a result, the total number of issued ENCs now stands at 5,535 as of week 13. Whilst on the topic of data, here is a quick reminder that this week's exchange set (week 14) will be released a day early, on Thursday 2nd April 2015.

On a final note, I wish everyone a very Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

References:
- United Nations (2015) Cyclone Pam: UN Agency reports all 22 Vanuatu islands reached with relief supplies [online] available at http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp? NewsID=50440#.VRldmPzF_ao [accessed on 30/03/2015]

- Bolton Museums (2013) Easter Crafts – Horwich Library [online] available at http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/1000/easter-crafts-horwich-library [accessed on 31/03/2015]


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