Page 48 - 2022 - Q1 - Minerva in Focus

ATHINA TRAINING CENTER Athina Training Center:
Workshop on ECDIS and ENCs
A Workshop on the ECDIS and the Elec- The incentive to organize the Workshop was based on requests made by Officers who
tronic Navigational Charts was organ- have attended seminars on the ECDIS and Passage Planning, on the changes in the
ized by the ATHINA Maritime Learning
and Development Center and Minerva
Marine on 19 January 2022.
48 MINERVA IN FOCUS – ISSUE 19 / Q1 2022
navigation policy of the company relating to the use, safety parameters’ setting and
the display configuration of ECDIS, as well as, on the developments around the S-100
product standard of the International Hydrographic Organization that pave the way to
the e-navigation.
The Workshop was attended physically on licensed ENCs from the ECDIS that can
and remotely by around 20 Officers and operate when the ECDIS primary and back-
shore personnel and a number of Minerva up systems fail.
Marine/Gas ships whose time difference
and schedule of operations allowed some Mr. Ev. Linardatos, E-Navigation Manager
of their Navigating Officers to participate. of Space Electronics and representative of
JRC, presented the JRC ECDIS network with
Mr. Alexis Hadjiantoniou, Director of Navbox, the JRC ECDIS hardware compo-
Nautical Charts & Nautical Publications nents, examples of the initial and full UKC
Division of the Hellenic Navy Hydrographic calculations, the NVI weather service to
Service, gave a historical retrospective of Navstation, and the digital chart table of
the Agency since 1921 and its activities in Navstation that can additionally play the
the production of ENCs according to the role of the back-up to the back-up system.
existing S 57 specifications. He focused
on CATZOC position and depth accuracies, Mr. St. Vitorakis focused on the interface
the compilation scale, and the impact of of ECDIS units with the other navigational
zoom-in by giving examples relating to instruments, the most common failures in
isolated dangers. He also presented the the hardware and software, and those fail-
overall structure of the S-100 standard ures caused by the improper operation of
and explained how the migration and the system. Trends of such relatively limit-
transition from the ENC S-57 to the specific ed failures that have been recorded since
S-101 has been scheduled to take place. the first installations of ECDIS to Minerva
Marine vessels were also presented.
Capt. A. Prasinos, Head of the Marine Dept.
of Minerva Marine, presented the key ECDIS Capt. P. Paidousis outlined the content of
procedures for safe navigation by explain- ECDIS-related seminars delivered at ATHI-
ing the steps of passage appraisal, route NA, the common weaknesses of Jr Officers,
planning, validation (route check), and and other ongoing efforts to support their
monitoring during the voyage. He focused better understanding of the numerous
on the company’s safety parameters, the functions of the ECDIS.
handling of T & Ps, and the importance of
position fixing as verification of GNSS-de- The good interaction and discussion with
rived positions displayed on the ECDIS. the participating Minerva Marine/Gas Of-
ficers made it evident that 12 years after
The representatives of Wartsila, Mr. ECDIS and ENCs have become equivalent
Vladimir Kolyada from St. Petersburg and to paper charts in SOLAS and almost com-
Mr. Christos Matsikoudis, gave a presenta- pulsory for the overwhelming majority of
tion on the Naviplanner and NaviSailor ocean-going vessels, the ECDIS is not a
4000 ECDIS showing the additional capa- simple charts display unit but a central
bilities that support voyage planning by system of any integrated bridge causing
calculating and considering the optimal a revolution to the safety of navigation,
routes. A real-time simulation of the far beyond the advantages of real-time
Bridge Mate followed, demonstrating a position indication and almost automated
backup and decision support tool based charts correction.