New Zealand Company of Master Mariners

Tuesday 15 September 2009 Lloyds List by Craig Eason

Instruction in use of Ecdis is tipped to be on IMO agenda despite adding to owners’ costs

TRAINING in the use of electronic chart display and information systems could become mandatory for seafarers, adding to the expense of shipowners already facing the costs of compulsory Ecdis equipment on their vessels.

Next January, the committee within the International Maritime Organization that deals with standards in training and watchkeeping will meet and industry experts believe the lack of formal training in Ecdis will be high on the agenda.

Earlier this year, the IMO formally agreed to make the installation of Ecdis equipment mandatory on all ships that fall under the requirements of the Solas convention.

In many cases, with the requirement for back-up services and the move to paperless navigation, this will mean that ships will require two systems to be installed.

Equipment makers are now rushing to get their systems fully approved to meet this burgeoning market in what is seen as the most significant change in navigation since the invention of the radar about 100 years ago.

To date, there are understood to be about 25 fully compliant Ecdis models on the market. But each will vary in the systems they offer. The most basic could cost about $17,000 while the top of the range system, with a host of additional features and data inputs, could set a shipowner back $220,000 per unit. A small fortune if the vessel is to require two systems to be able to eliminate the use of paper charts.

But with the range of systems there is the need for training. There is an IMO model course, but this is neither mandatory nor, in some experts’ opinions, does it cover the key issues.

“It is woefully inadequate. It does not cover the reason why ships ground at all,” said one ex-navigator, who has worked on a range of Ecdis systems. He said there was a huge lack of understanding of the functions of Ecdis and supported the move to create a formal level of training for ships’ navigators. He added that traditionally cadets spend months at college learning about navigation with paper charts, yet there are only vague guidelines on teaching the use of a technology that is supposed to replace them.

Some flag states could be developing rules to make Ecdis training mandatory already, and more advanced shipping companies are believed to have placed Ecdis training as part of their International Safety Management code.

But such rules are not specified as mandatory, nor widespread, and often refer to officers requiring only a degree of familiarisation with Ecdis, such as in the port states inspection criteria for countries in the Paris Memorandum of Understanding.

Seafarer training colleges around the world have started offering Ecdis courses, as have a range of other providers. These are not compulsory, and in some cases not approved by a flag state.

There are concerns that should Ecdis training become mandatory, there are not enough training facilities, approved or not, to cater for the demand that could ensue. Experts think there could be up to half a million seafarers, who would need to be trained over the coming eight years.

The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency has approved a number of courses, one of which is a private training specialist, Ecdis Ltd. A founder of the company, Mal Instone, said seafarers were left with too little training and develop too much faith in the system.

He cited the incident in January 2008 when the P&O ferry Pride of Canterbury hit a submerged but charted wreck because the bridge team had been relying on an Ecdis, which was not being used on the best settings.

One of the limitations of an Ecdis chart, said Mr Instone, is the reduction of information available as a user zooms into a specific chart area — a little like using a larger scale chart but zooming in on a web based map on the internet. Known as scamin, or scale minimum, crucial information, which could include depth data, can be lost, as the screen would otherwise become too cluttered. “You have to understand the system, and you still have to understand navigation. The same skills are required,” Mr Instone said.

Ecdis Ltd insists on a five-day training course for navigators on the use of the technology. This includes learning how to use the Ecdis system without having a satellite fix input.

According to Mr Instone, many bridge teams rely too heavily on their global positioning satellite position fixes, which can be disrupted or inaccurate. Therefore, navigators should be able to use other data inputs to the Ecdis system to create a position fix.

According to the rules of the International Maritime Organization, all owners must have their vessels’ electronic chart display and information systems compliant between 2012 and 2018, depending on vessel type.

There have to be approved systems, knowledge of how to use the systems, and the right electronic charts to put into the hardware. There is currently a scramble to get the charts ready.

A proper Ecdis chart is known as S57 compliant, referring to the specifications set by the International Hydrographic Organization. Hydrographic offices of coastal states are converting their charts to this format, or getting more experienced hydrographic offices to do it for them.

An S57 compliant electronic navigation chart has to be deployed in an Ecdis, otherwise the system is considered a raster chart display service — raster charts are a scanned replication of the paper chart in an electronic display over which the vessel’s position can be laid, along with a voyage route.

Ecdis charts are more like databases of information that can be interrogated. They provide all of the navigation functionality of the raster chart but add capabilities such as additional alarms triggered by the chart data and the ability to remove some chart information to simplify the display. They also allow additional features to be used, such as weather routing, light and buoy details and even three-dimensional mapping.

Chart providers are in a position to make a lot of money with mandatory Ecdis, as a vessel sailing in a particular cell, a term for the specific Ecdis chart area, has no choice but to use it.

Hydrographic offices have been active in converting their paper charts to Ecdis versions. However, this means using an approved datum, a kind of zero sea level point and position, to ensure all the areas match each other. There are many paper charts that have areas that have not been surveyed for centuries. To become Ecdis compliant, such a chart could need to be resurveyed to ensure it is reported at the right datum, allowing vessels to sail in and out of cells seamlessly.

Mal Instone, a co-founder of the training provider Ecdis Ltd, said shipowners and ship masters are unaware of the issues at stake in the deployment of Ecdis and the lack of coverage that might still be lacking once Ecdis becomes mandatory.

The more profitable busy sea routes will have been converted to the right format, less-used charts will probably be last, if at all, he suggested.

The UKHO has its own brand of Ecdis data, and has signed contracts with other government HOs to develop and use its data, but it admits to having a programme of developing the major sea routes and ports first.

It has also set itself the ambitious target of achieving full coverage by the end of the year and to date has 9,500 encs in its vector chart service, covering 1,800 ports.

Too clever by half

“Is the equipment fulfilling some perhaps unwritten agenda that suggests that manufacturers will find it easier to sell integrated navigational packages if they can be used by less competent people?”

Michael Gray

Tuesday 1 September 2009

I STILL remember the radar on my first ship. It was a dull grey box, with a soft rubber hood for daylight viewing, like the What the Butler Saw machine on Bognor Pier. It had a little aluminium roller blind to “protect” the controls, with a lock, so that no unauthorised person would be party to the electronic secrets. The key was kept on a brass hook adjacent to the set, although the previous master had insisted on keeping it, so that the officer of the watch had to make a personal application if he wanted to avail himself of this navigational aid.

The radar, we were fiercely instructed, was to be treated as an auxiliary to our traditional means of ascertaining position and risk of collision, and was never to be relied upon. This was good advice, as the thing was pretty useless, as it wouldn’t hold its tune for more than about 10 minutes, and half the time it just wouldn’t work at all. The Radio Officer wouldn’t touch it, despite the master’s entreaties, as he was employed by the Marconi Company and this device had been produced by some much inferior manufacturer.

The second mate, as the senior watchkeeper, was thus responsible for the radar, and bore the brunt of the master’s abuse when the screen was covered in sea clutter, or the device failed to provide an echo from a nearby ship, or some enormous cliff five miles away. The other irritating feature was caused by the master refusing to take his cigarette out of his mouth with his face in the hood, so the screen gradually became fogged up with ash, and the rubber hood itself would become soft and sticky with the sweat of the viewer, so that the observers would leave the bridge at the end of their watch with a black oval shape inscribed on their features, like a Maori tattoo.

It was also used only in conditions of bad visibility, or perhaps if we were trying for a landfall after several days of dead reckoning. Nobody had ever told us that the worst thing you could do to a radar was to keep turning it off and on. I think it might have been something to do with the widely circulated rumour that if you stood too close to a working radar, you would be rendered impotent and infertile. I guess those things really mattered to us. It was, I suppose, an early form of risk mitigation.

Much of this early radar equipment was useless, because it was really insufficiently rugged for shipborne use. It tended to be placed in the wheelhouse, adjacent to a door through which salt spray would not infrequently surge, corroding all the electrical contacts. It was full of valves, like old radio sets, and these were about as reliable as are cheap light bulbs. I remember years later, as the apprehensive custodian of a radar set, watching as a flat-footed AB dropped a box containing my indent of a dozen spare valves all the way down a ladder to the boat deck, before presenting me with a box full of broken glass with a big grin all over his face.

Gradually radars improved, and modern equipment bears no resemblance whatever to that primitive gear first seen on merchant ships. It is rugged, tested in temperature extremes and able to withstand vibration. The components are designed for reliability, and given a modicum of competence, it will be indeed equipment to be relied upon for almost every conceivable need. Which is just as well, because its carriage is mandatory, and the seaworthiness of the ship itself is more than likely to be called into question if it is not working.

The modern radar provides a vast amount of information when overlaid on an electronic chart, itself developing a navigational character of its own and capable of a degree of interactivity. Indeed, the screens in front of the eyes of the modern officer on watch contain all the information he or she needs to determine the ship’s position, discover the identity of ships in the vicinity and their movements, and keep their own vessel out of trouble.

So why don’t they? Well-equipped ships still collide, and run aground, to the bewilderment of their insurers and frustration of their owners. Careers and often lives are lost or blighted by navigational disasters, like that which left a lot of dead seafarers in the Malacca Strait just recently. So, is the equipment too clever for its own good? Is it that people are not properly trained to use it, or are too preoccupied with paperwork, or other tasks, or are exhausted, or have merely allowed their attention to wander? Are they too lean-manned for safety?

All of these excuses have indeed been used to explain inexplicable accidents, and there is probably plenty of justification for these reasons. But why did the watchkeepers not look out of their wheelhouse windows from time to time? Why was the master not called, and why was he not on the bridge in an area of navigational stress, where so many of these accidents occur?

But maybe, just maybe, the equipment has reached such a relative peak of efficiency that it has in effect removed the responsibility from the watchkeeper, in reality if not in law. It is a challenge that people rise to, to have the responsibility for the safety of a big ship, for navigation and collision avoidance. Sure, navigation in the long ocean passages can be tedious and must be doubly so without the exercise of celestial navigation, but in busy coastal waters there is a need to regularly determine the vessel’s position, plot other ships and make the necessary course adjustments to keep the ship safe.

Except that on the well-equipped modern vessel, the officer of the watch, once a responsible and very active participant in a challenging task, is relegated to that of a mere observer, a monitor watching the little bright light that is one’s own ship, moving down the track predetermined by the computer, which will duly anticipate a course change and execute it to perfection. The echo of an approaching ship will be automatically interrogated, and a course change according to the Rule of the Road will increase the closest point of approach to a safe distance.

Sitting in his posture-perfect chair, the officer of the watch knows that he should be checking the vessel’s position by alternative means, verifying the compass error, ensuring that all his electronic sensors are providing correct information. But he knows from his experience that the computers rarely go wrong, so what is the point of checking? There is no apparent reward in all this checking and verifying, just a confirmation of what might be expected. There is limited challenge in being a mere monitor. Besides, there is paperwork that will not wait, if there are not to be angry scenes at the next port.

We have a fair idea all this is happening, from the incidence of accidents and the conclusions of accident investigators. We have recognised the problem of complacency, as identified by the Chief Inspector of the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch. But are we doing anything to restore something of the navigational challenge of watchkeeping, to bring the human being back into the loop and get him or her more “involved” and a genuine participant instead of a mere observer?

And indeed, is the equipment becoming too clever by half, fulfilling some perhaps unwritten agenda that suggests that manufacturers will find it easier to sell integrated navigational packages if they can be used by less competent people? What we used to call a degree of idiot-proofing? Cruel but perceptive officers, who have seen shipowners scouring the world for cheap seafarers, have occasionally alluded to this very point. It is perhaps worth recalling that it is some thirty years since the programme in Japan was launched to design a ship which could be controlled remotely, with no seafarers aboard it at all.

As we have dabbled with one-man bridge operation, the refusal to use separate lookouts at night, and other cost saving measures, the inference has been clear. Inject a shipowner with a truth drug and he may well blurt out his real objective is largely automatic, remote ship operation, where competence may not entirely be crucial.

Perhaps we need equipment that does rather less, leaving the officer of the watch to do more, so that individual skills can be improved. And there are encouraging things happening. The Nautical Institute is becoming an observer at the International Maritime Organization, so that the users of equipment will be able to have their important say when specifications are decided.

For too long, it might be argued, these things have been carved up by the equipment manufacturers in effect selling their story to the administrators, with the users excluded until it is too late. This is important, just as it is important that the Nautical Institute delegation, which will depend heavily on committed volunteers with the relevant expertise, finds sufficient numbers of these paragons.

And maybe we will get simpler, better equipment that includes and challenges its user, rather than banishing him or her to the sidelines.