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Advanced ECDIS Getting the most out of your equipment. Things happen very quickly at 28kts. A cable is covered in 13 seconds and a mile in only 2 mins 9 secs. It feels even faster at night, close to shore, navigating with only a chart, the log and a stopwatch whilst under pressure to deliver three consorts into a coordinated anchorage on time. At least during the day you get the use of a sextant! This is what it is like to undertake the Specialist Navigators course or SPEC N for short, the Royal Navys (RN) premiere navigation course. Designed to test the students mental maths, quick thinking, initiative and raw navigational ability under intense pressure, it is seen as the ultimate test for any navigator. What makes the SPEC N course so challenging is the requirement to accurately fix the position of the ship and predict future position at high speed without the use of modern fixing aids such as radar and GPS. Instead, the student is forced to harness all available navigation techniques, in particular those contained within the Admiralty Manual of Navigation. These include fixing by a line of soundings, running fixes, sextant angles, doubling the angle on the bow and use of bearing pairs to calculate distance off an object. It is quite common on course to conduct an anchorage with a sextant in either hand, taking a vertical sextant angle with one and a horizontal angle with the other. Now, imagine plotting fixes in this manner on a paper chart. Would you know how to do it? When was the last time you picked up a sextant or station pointer? Now imagine planning and executing it with ECDIS as your primary means of navigation. Again, would you know how to do it and is your ECDIS capable of processing such information? (At the moment the reader is probably thinking, who cares? Who actually needs to do this in real life anyway...) Notwithstanding the questions above, you may be asking why one would need to go to such lengths when RADAR and GPS are available? The Royal Navy needs to be able to navigate in a sensor deprived situation because operational areas could preclude the use of RADAR to avoid detection and where GPS jamming and other sensor denial is prevalent. The RN must train its navigators to acquire such skills. This necessitates pushing the ECDIS system to the limits of its capabilities and is why the warfare equivalent of ECDIS (WECDIS) gives access to increased functionality to facilitate underwater navigation, waterspace management and the input of position information from a variety of traditional sources.

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Bottom Contour Fixing using OSI ECPINS

So thats the RN, but realistically with todays reliability of GPS and RADAR, are such advanced ECDIS techniques really relevant in the Merchant Navy? The ability to perform some of the techniques mentioned above may be deemed unnecessary and old fashioned for commercial operation. However, the skill of manually fixing independent of RADAR and GPS and the ability to clearly display where your ship can and cannot go on the chart are techniques relevant to any mariner. Firstly, manual fixing independent of RADAR and GPS may be the only means of cross checking the GPS or in the extreme, but not uncommon, navigating in an area of an unreliable datum or sensor input failure. Lets not forget all the work conducted by Trinity House with regards to the very present danger of GPS jamming and the importance of being able to identify and manage such a situation. Secondly, calculating the safe water available when operating to minimal under keel clearance with a safety depth that falls in between charted contours is vital to safely manage todays commercial pressure operations. It would therefore be prudent to develop procedures and practice them in case of such an outcome. I therefore advocate two techniques that should be utilised in ECDIS as common practice, manual fixing and the ability to implement a Limiting Danger Line (LDL). We at ECDIS Ltd feel so strongly about the relevance of these techniques that we teach them as part of our 5 day STCW IMO 1.27 course.

Fixing by a Line of Soundings using OSI ECPINS

Manual Fixing It is not enough to rely solely on GPS or RADAR to provide fix information. An ECDIS does not have to have a RADAR overlay under performance standards, but if it does have this facility, it is prudent to utilise it in its entirety. This is the subject of another element on the course and should further information be required, please call us. However, for GPS denial, the mindset you need to be in is not a case of if you lose GPS but very much a case of when you lose GPS. The mariner must therefore utilise the ECDIS like any other navaid and question the accuracy of the data in order to quality control the information. The premise here is twofold - that manual fixing should be used to cross reference GPS and that loss of GPS does not mean loss of ECDIS. I therefore recommend that manual fixing is incorporated by operators to prove the GPS position correct and good practice in
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case of ECDIS failure. Plotting a fix in ECDIS (Lines of Position) is a requirement under the performance standards and executing this function can be very quick. However, it does depend on the software and just as on paper, practice, practice, practice. It can easily be quicker to plot a fix on an ECDIS than on a paper chart so there should be no excuse for not doing it if needed!

Fixing by HSA on Kelvin Hughes

Transferring Position Lines on Kelvin Hughes

The importance in being able to perform this task swiftly is threefold, one; it should not detract from looking out the window and driving the ship safely using all nav aids, two; the task is performed as a quick check at an appropriate time and three; operators should be able to comfortably manage long periods of relative navigation for areas of the world that require it and in case of sudden need. In event of GPS failure, the operator can utilise the DR function in ECDIS and revert to traditional fixing skills in order to provide accurate positional data. Note that loss of GPS may also mean loss of positional information on your RADAR. Furthermore, the environment you find yourself in may preclude or limit visual fixing to such an extent that the operator may have to use transferred position lines or fix by a line of soundings. Some systems can perform beyond the minimum performance standards in this regard by allowing the operator to plot visual bearings, radar ranges and other techniques accordingly. As well as being quick and easy to plot, the operator also benefits from a system that automatically calculates DR and EP based upon last known values such as set and drift, COG and SOG, when in DR mode. It can be seen therefore that manually entered positional information can very quickly establish where you are and where you will be to a high degree of accuracy.

Running Fix on OSI ECPINS

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GPS failure need not be an emergency, although to maintain safety of navigation you may be forced to push your system further than you have ever done before. The prudent operator should therefore make it their business to know the capabilities and limitations of their system, how to prove positional information correct and what to do when GPS is unreliable. Limiting Danger Line The ability of an ECDIS system to highlight a given Safety Contour based on a set Safety Depth is one of the great advantages of the system. In essence the system displays clearly in bold the contour beyond which you do not wish to proceed. Furthermore, if you have activated your Anti-Grounding Cone (AGC also called Safety Frame or Guard Zone) the system will alarm when in contact with the safety contour, thereby giving prior warning of the proximity of danger. However, the lack of contour data currently available within ENCs means the operator is not able to fully harmonise the Safety Contour with the Safety Depth. If I set my Safety Depth value to 6.5m, for example, the system will automatically highlight the next available contour, which is normally the 10m line. It can be seen therefore, that if the vessel by necessity has to proceed over soundings of less than 10m but greater than 6.5m, safe areas cannot be defined and it is therefore dangerous. Furthermore, the system will continuously alarm causing alarm fatigue. This shortfall essentially means that vessels that need to reduce the Safety Contour in accordance with their Safety Depth in order to get into harbour safely will be faced with two options: 1. Turn the Anti-Grounding Cone off. 2. Reduce the Safety Contour value to 5m.

Safety Contour value 20m, Safety Depth 16m

It must be seen that both the options above are inherently dangerous. Turning the AGC off means that the system will only alarm when the ship symbol encounters them, which in most cases will be too late. Reducing the Safety Contour value below the value of Safety Depth is possible in many systems, although I do not recommend it as the majority of systems only alarm crossing the safety contour not the safety depth! A solution to this problem is the drawing of a Limiting Danger Line or LDL. This is a tried and tested technique that works on RNCs as well as ENCs. Essentially, it is a manually inserted danger line that will alarm when the safety frame touches it, replacing the Safety Contour in extremis. The value of the LDL is calculated as follows: Draught + Safety + Squat HoT (Time dependent)
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LDL manually drawn at 16m and given danger attribute on Transas Navi -Sailor. Left is ENC and right RNC

When the Safety Depth value is inserted, all soundings equal to or less than this value are highlighted in bold. Using the relevant function on your ECDIS system, draw a danger line around the soundings to produce the LDL. The safety value is a prime consideration and must be large enough to take into account the quality of data. Because the contour is being drawn manually you must take into account the inaccuracy of the data in use. It is of note that some systems can draw an LDL automatically. It must be remembered that a LDL is time dependant because it is based upon the height of tide and that when no longer required it must be ensured that the Safety Contour is reverted back to a value greater than Safety Depth. If the LDL is drawn and the available channel is deemed too narrow to facilitate use of the AGC (i.e. if used it would cause alarm fatigue) then it is strongly recommended that Clearing Bearings be used to define the area of water in which it is safe to navigate. It goes without saying that you really must know what you are doing before attempting this technique. The principles of navigation have not changed, although the medium through which we navigate has changed. ECDIS is simply a navigational aid, albeit a complex one. The fact that there is a human interface means that data must still be questioned, understood and acted upon. Therefore, everything you have ever learnt and all the experience you have is relevant in the digital navigation era. If used correctly, ECDIS systems will provide the operator with spare capacity, so there is no excuse for not looking out of the window and making sound judgements based on the practice of good seamanship. We passionately believe that traditional navigational methods are still relevant. We are not teaching people to navigate, rather we are teaching people to use ECDIS in order to navigate safely. We therefore train people to use ECDIS systems by utilising existing navigational knowledge and developing the use of traditional navigational methods as redundancy when GPS is not available. Ignore the basic principles of navigation at your peril. Instead, strive to utilise the system to its full capabilities by understanding it fully and pushing its capabilities to the limits. Know your system strengths, weaknesses and shortfalls and use it to prove GPS correct!

By Malcolm Instone Director of Operations & Standards ECDIS Ltd

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