NOAA paper Charts to be phased Out

[cfolster]

It looks like it’s going to get a little harder to make our own charts without the pdf’s.

https://www.passagemaker.com/trawler-news/noaa-ending-traditional-paper-charts?fbclid=IwAR2aUKvcnrSSq0dvtLLh5-qNFfd1doi5BDqKc5PAWdM9nuN8q01AdIcIbNo

apologies if this has already been discussed.

[Jim Snyder]

It looks like this may happen slowly but I think it might make sense for NSPN to develop a library while the .pdf charts are still available. I have most of them saved already from the Bold Coast to Scituate and would be happy to work on this if the board deems it of value. Of course anyone can still download the charts now but those new to the sport ten years from now might appreciate a library.

[mhabich]

The article links to NOAA's prototype tools to create your own custom charts.  The idea is good, but the implementation is poor (being really generous).  The charts have no land contours, spotty details in water, inaccurate coastlines...  I hope and believe it will improve greatly, but doubt it will approach what we have now with the raster charts.  Go check it out.

[kattenbo]

Sent some comments to NOAA - 3 main points:

• Paper needed as back up for electronics
• Needed for easier, hands off use on small paddle craft like kayaks, canoes - at a glance use when paddling
• Prototype does not show on-land topo data (contours, land marks, etc.) critical for near shore navigation and safety (landing zones, etc.) for paddle craft that's currently available on printed charts.

 

Here's what I got back:

Thank you for your comments on the "Sunsetting Traditional NOAA Paper Charts" plan found at https://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/publications/docs/raster-sunset.pdf. Your feedback will be carefully considered along with other responses received from the public, industry, and government nautical chart users and other stakeholders from whom we are seeking input. 

We plan to have a yearlong period of outreach to help us understand chart users' concerns and to communicate the benefits of the transition from separately compiled traditional paper nautical charts to the use of electronic navigational charts (ENC) and paper chart products based on ENC data. 

As stated in the sunsetting plan, we are undertaking a significant effort to improve the consistency and level of detail provided by NOAA's primary chart product, the ENC, which is used by commercial mariners and by a growing number of recreational boaters. 

The sunset effort will wind down and ultimately stop production of all traditional NOAA paper nautical charts by January 2025, but an alternative paper chart product is being developed that will be even more useful and up-to-date than existing, traditional paper nautical charts. The NOAA Custom Chart web application can create raster chart images that may then be printed to create ENC-based paper charts. A prototype of the web application is at https://devgis.charttools.noaa.gov/pod. Many improvements are planned for the prototype, but we are still interested in hearing suggestions for other enhancements.

Best regards, 

NOAA's Office of Coast Survey
 

Edited December 27, 2019 by kattenbo
added info

[Ken]

Has anyone figure out how to select an extent with that tool?  I'm trying to do it and I would expect you click on one corner and drag to the opposite.  But the move function doesn't disable in that mode so it scrolls and ends up selecting the wrong area.

Figured it out.  You do not draw a box like a typical selection tool, you must click the center of what you want your chart to contain.

 

 

Edited January 17, 2020 by Ken

[Joseph Berkovitz]

This seems like a good type of change to make (the paper charts do have all kinds of consistency problems and must be very costly to maintain). BUT NOAA is obviously not ready to do this yet. The quality and layout of the new ENC (pure digital) data seems way worse and harder to read than the paper/raster charts. Everything is going to depend on NOAA's ability to get this stuff figured out by 2025. Good thing we can always trust the government to get something done on time ?

I would recommend that anyone interested in this issue send NOAA their feedback via https://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/customer-service/assist/ with maybe a specific example of why the current formatting doesn't work.

[Dan Foster]

USGS (the makers of US topo maps) have already gone through the process of abandoning hand-drawn or even human-influenced cartography, and have scrapped the traditional topo maps in favor of something called USTopo, which is entirely derived from vector data, with the option to display it over aerial imagery. I think it's a mistake to conclude that NOAA is going to make drastic improvements to the final ENC product from what we're seeing now. ENC has never been about kayakers, power boaters, or sailors. It's like your car's navigation basemap, except for ships. There's no shoreline detail because a big ship's autopilot should never take it anywhere near shallow water.

I think the correct way to interpret this announcement is that NOAA and US Coast Guard now believe that every ocean-going vessel now has electronic navigation, and that the sole purpose of NOAA's mapping efforts will be to provide updates to the ENC data that feeds those electronic navigation devices.

I suspect that the way forward for kayakers who don't have a tablet running navigation software strapped to their decks will be to print out ENC data superimposed over aerial photographs, which will be the only way to determine shoreline detail in the future.

 

 

[Joseph Berkovitz]

I'm very much in agreement with the need to shift to digital cartography. But I think the problem with ENC right now is not the level of detail in the data itself (the shoreline data in ENC actually seems quite usable to me). It's the poor presentation of the ENC data for human readability, because the software that displays this data makes poor  typography and graphic design choices, and fails to prevent visual collisions.

Here's a detailed example of the mouth of Gloucester Harbor from NOAA's prototype ENC custom viewer.  Can you quickly find the green "1DB" and red "2DB" buoys? It's hard! The labels are at a distance from the object, and are rendered in exactly the same font and size as the depth contours. Furthermore the 1DB buoy is superimposed directly on top of a depth, and its label "1DB" is obscured  by the line for the underground cable.

But this is not really the fault of the ENC data per se.  Here is Navionics' Chart Viewer rendering of exactly the same data, but with different choices:

It's also far from perfect, but the channel buoys are a lot clearer.

My point here is this: software employing ENC can evolve to make better layout decisions, ones that meet human expectations for readability. But it hasn't, and we need to figure out how to push things in that direction. Then we'll be able to go get our custom charts, download them as PDFs, and be happy with them. I would really prefer that to cobbling together fragments of paper chart PDFs, in the end it will be better for everyone.

[Joseph Berkovitz]

For comparison here's the NOAA paper/raster chart version with some notes on why it's better– in ways that have nothing to do with the data.

Some differences from ENC renderings above that help readers distinguish the different kinds of information

• Buoy labeling is typographically distinct from depths (italicized and boldface)
• Place names (e.g. "Dog Bar Channel") are oriented in the direction of the corresponding feature 
• Descriptive labels for secondary features like seafloor (e.g. "rky") are italic and do not share a typographical baseline with nearby depths
• Underwater or administrative features ("e.g. "Cable Area") are in a distinct and lighter color.

Edited February 12, 2020 by Joseph Berkovitz