PRESS RELEASE

 Netherlands‐based Datema and its ENCTrack service has been awarded the 2009 maritime innovation award for its innovative approach to the distribution and management of electronic navigational chart services.

This presentation has been warmly welcomed by the PRIMAR regional electronic navigation centre (RENC) in Stavanger, Norway, which has cooperated together with its technical working groups with Datema for more than two years.

It helped to define the overall project deliverables for ENCTrack, agreeing and examining the basic reporting requirements and criteria for this type of ENC licensing and reporting.

“We had three goals,” explains Peter Scott, PRIMAR’s senior technical advisor on the project.
“Our first and paramount objective was to increase safety at sea by ensuring that ENC data were always available to the mariner when and if they required it – especially on the many vessels unable to receive permit files (the keys needed to open electronic charts) while at sea.
“Second, we wanted to make the working environment on board as straightforward as possible by removing unwieldy administrative routines where possible, and thereby allowing the navigator to concentrate more time on other bridge operations with a higher priority than ordering ENCs.
”Finally, our aim was to reduce the cost of ENC data by ensuring the most efficient use of the current licensing schemes where possible.

Verification and control of vessel position information as well as the need to automate reporting fully were required during the project, he adds. “However, Datema was more than able to meet the requirements of our members” Like most hydrographic offices, PRIMAR believes it is extremely important to support every
effort aimed at increasing the adoption of ECDIS systems and to ensure that ENC services meet the requirements of the SOLAS fleet from their own perspective.

“In being awarded such a prestigious award, the Datema service appears to meet both these requirements,” says Mr Scott.

Gerry Larsson Fedde, director general of the Norwegian Hydrographic Service which operates the PRIMAR RENC, has recently openly challenged existing licensing systems.His comments focus on offering a new way of thinking for the information age, which is rapidly moving the maritime industry towards new supply models.

Datema’s ENCTrack solution is not the only innovative ENC service in the pipeline, Mr Larsson Fedde notes.

“We expect others to appear over time.”
“All hydrographic offices need to realise that flexibility in their ENC licensing will be crucial in supporting the adoption of ECDIS systems before these start to become mandatory in 2012. In my view, it will be impossible to continue to apply traditional licensing models, since the industry will not be held back.”

PRIMAR RENC members fully support the ENCTrack service, and discussions continue with the IC‐ENC RENC operated by the UK Hydrographic Office to convince it to give full support to this very important innovation. PRIMAR remains optimistic that this issue will be resolved in the near future.