New IHO guidelines for hydrographic geospatial data

Modern navigation systems and geospatial solutions use digital data from a variety of sources. In order to facilitate the integration of hydrographic data and applications, the IHO developed S-100, a hydrographic geospatial data standard that can support this array and is fully aligned with international geospatial standards, in particular the ISO 19000 series.

The aim of the new S-97 guidelines is to assist in the creation of harmonized product specifications utilising S-100 for implementation within the e-Navigation ecosystem. This encompasses all product specifications created for use in IMO-defined e-Navigation systems, both on shore and at sea, such as ECDIS. However S-100 also has a wide range of applications that can extend beyond e-Navigation.

S-100 is inherently more flexible than S-57 and makes provision for such things as the use of imagery and gridded data types, enhanced metadata and multiple encoding formats. It also provides a more flexible and dynamic maintenance regime for features, attributes and portrayal via a dedicated online Registry. S-100 provides a framework of components that enables the building of standardized product specifications for the modelling of hydrographic data, thus providing true interoperability between different data standards and systems.

S-97 is intended for developers and maintainers of product specifications that utilize the IHO framework standard S-100 (Universal Hydrographic Data Model)