Research On Related Issues Of Electronic Chart Display And Information System (ECDIS) On The High Latitude Sea Areas

Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) is the important ship navigation equipment, allows mariners to view Electronic Navigational Charts (ENC). The production of ENCs is being supported by the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) tools.In the light of changes in ice conditions on the Polar Regions due to the Global Warming, routes showing through ice-infested waters become of interest. Shipping activity in the Polar Regions is a complicated endeavour. What seemed impossible before because of the rough weather and thick ice is now becoming possible. This will increase transports from and to the ports in this region. However, navigation in these waters now poses challenges that will need new solutions to guarantee safety for mariners and ships. ECDIS is showing restrictions when using on the high latitude sea areas. The first one is projection. The Mercator projection is still an only projection used in ECDIS despite the extremely large distortions it causes. The lack of international standards for the employment of map projections for ECDIS in the Polar Regions has resulted a demand to select a more suitable projection for ECDIS in these areas. Another restriction is lacking in displaying ice subjects. Ice, which has been consistently proven to be one of the most dangerous features impacting navigation in the Polar Regions, does not have its own detailed description in specifications of International Maritime Organisation (IMO) or International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO). This suggests that, there is a need for standardization for the display of ice objects on ECDIS.The purposes of this research are:firstly to present the current status and weakness of using the Mercator projection on ECDIS on the high latitude sea areas and recommend the specific map projection instead. Some different map projections are evaluated and compared with respect to their fitness for use in the ECDIS environment. The comparison is supported by distortion analysis data and then specially constructed maps portraying selected sea areas by using GIS. The other objective of this research is recommendation for colors display of ice objects in ECDIS then using GIS to perform ice objects with suggested colors.The recommended map projection helps to reduce a considerable amount of distortions, make mariners more convenient and easier to plot ship positions in the Polar waters. Furthermore, with the employment of colours for ice objects, ECDIS screen becomes more and more distinguishable due to the detectability of ice objects. Different ice objects with their own characteristics will be shown with different colours. Mariners can access ice condition of sea areas in a short time before plan a safe passage through these waters. My thesis could be of considerable value to the specifications or official documentation for ECDIS in the future.