Raster Navigational Charts

[Beverly Friddle]

NOAAhas already started to cancel individual charts and will shut down all production and maintenance of traditional paper nautical charts and the associated raster chart products and services by January 2025.

Just as NOAA electronic navigational chart (NOAA ENC) cells do, all raster charts portray water depths,coastlines, dangers, aids to navigation, landmarks, bottom characteristics and other features, as well as regulatory, tide, and other information. All raster chart products are based on and have the same appearance as the "traditional" paper charts that Coast Survey has provided for U.S. waters since the early 19th century.

They contain all critical corrections published in notices to mariners since the last new edition of the chart was released, as well as any newly compiled routine changes (see the "Chart Updates" sidebar on the right).

The U. S. Government no longer prints paper copies of its raster nautical charts. However, NOAA provides digital images of its raster charts to NOAA certified chart agents, from whom the public may purchase NOAA paper nautical charts.

Certified chart agents ensure that the charts are printed at the proper scale and quality to meet U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) chart carriage requirements. In fact, only charts printed by a NOAA certified chart agent are accepted by the USCG as meeting chart carriage requirements for commercial vessels. No other raster chart format meets USCG carriage requirements.

These are full size Portable Document Format (PDF) images of NOAA paper nautical charts. PDFs may be viewed with free PDF readers such as Adobe Acrobat Reader. Most modern web browsers can open these documents with no additional software.

Paper plots of Full-size nautical chart PDFs DO NOT meet USCG chart carriage requirements for commercial vessels. Only NOAA paper nautical charts printed by a NOAA certified chart agent, who will ensure that the charts are printed at the proper scale and quality, meet USCG chart carriage requirements.

The image at left shows the index of the 12 chart pages of booklet chart 13246 of Cape Cod Bay. The extent of each page extends past the boundaries shown in the index, so that the coverage of each page overlaps a bit with adjacent pages.

Other pages in the booklet include excerpts from the U.S. Coast Pilot and other information such as descriptions of navigational aids and hazards in the area. Emergency information for the charted area is printed on the back cover.

RNCs are approved for use by IMO ECDIS mandated vessels only if adequate ENC data is not available. Since complete ENC coverage is available in all U.S. waters, vessels required to use ECDIS may not navigate with NOAA RNCs.

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In 2019, NOAA announced its Sunsetting of Raster Nautical Charts in the Federal Register. The raster sunset program will gradually end production and maintenance of NOAA traditional paper and raster nautical chart products. Beginning in 2021, NOAA will start canceling its traditional nautical charts. The process is expected to be completed by January 2025.

The ENC product format is specified by the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO). Each ENC is a digital database that stores the location and shape of charted features as pairs of latitude and longitude coordinates. This is known as "vector format" data. Database records associated with each feature provide detailed information, such as the feature's color, shape, height, purpose, quality of position, and other attributes. The data contained within ENCs can be used by electronic navigation systems to enable safer voyage planning and route monitoring. This includes initiating warnings and alarms when a ship is heading into shallow water or toward other dangers to navigation. Updated ENC revision files are available weekly. When ENC revision data is loaded many navigation systems apply these updates automatically. ENCs will continue to be produced and enhanced after all raster format charts are canceled.

The NOAA Custom Chart (NCC) application was developed to enable users to create their own customized charts directly from the latest NOAA ENC data. While these custom charts do not fulfill U.S. Coast Guard carriage requirements for regulated commercial vessels, they contain the same up-to-date information contained on ENCs.

Raster charts include traditional paper nautical charts and the corresponding digital images of these charts. These charts are composed of a grid of columns and rows of color pixels - or dots of ink on paper charts - which form the text, linework, and other symbols that make up the chart. The scale, symbolization, text placement, and orientation of the chart is fixed when the chart is compiled. All types of raster charts will be canceled through the sunset program.

There is a growing need for ever more detailed nautical charts. This is driven by several factors, including larger ships now entering ports and transiting channels with the tightest of under keel clearances - requiring more precise depth information, the greater adoption of (in some cases, the requirement for) use of digital charts, electronic navigational systems, and GPS - requiring greater positional accuracy. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) require nearly all commercial ships on international voyages to use ENCs for navigation. The U.S. Coast Guard has allowed commercial ships on domestic voyages within U.S. waters to use ENCs in lieu of paper nautical charts since 2016. At the same time the use of traditional paper nautical charts is decreasing. Sales of NOAA print on demand paper nautical charts have dropped more than 50% since 2010.

Guided by these trends, NOAA initiated a program to sunset its traditional paper nautical charts and the corresponding raster chart products and services. This enables focusing resources on improving the coverage and content of the digital chart format that is used throughout the world for navigation, the electronic navigational chart (ENC). Since 2010, subscriptions for individual NOAA ENC charts provided by Regional ENC Coordinating Centers (RENCs) have quadrupled. (The RENC concept was developed by the IHO to ensure that ENC data complies with international standards and to coordinate the distribution of ENCs from producing nations to data users.)

ENC data is produced by scores of other countries and used by mariners around the world. In addition to the Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) equipment that the IMO requires large vessels to use to display ENC data, ENCs can now be used in many electronic chart display, chart plotter, mobile app, and GPS systems used by other professional and recreational mariners. These are clear indications that ENCs are already an important part of marine navigation and that they are the foundation upon which future marine navigation systems and other marine related data are being built.

At the end of 2020, NOAA maintained over 1000 individual paper and raster nautical charts, comprised of over 2000 separate main chart panels and insets, compiled in over a 100 different scales. Producing and distributing raster charts requires separate computer software and data storage, as well as specialized cartographic training and processing that is not needed to make ENCs. NOAA now maintains over 1600 ENCs and is carrying out an ambitious program to replace much of the existing ENC coverage with more detailed (larger scale) data. When completed, the enhanced ENC product suite will consist of over 9000 ENCs in eleven standard scales. NOAA has only been able to create and maintain this enhanced suite of ENC products by redirecting resources previously used to update and distribute traditional paper and raster nautical charts.

In some regions, chart cancellations will progress from the largest to the smallest scale charts. For example, it is anticipated that in some cases the larger scale harbor charts will be canceled before the sunsetting process moves on to start canceling the next smaller scale approach scale charts. In other regions, these larger scale charts may be canceled later in the process due to commercial or national security reasons.

This mirrors the general strategy being applied to the creation of new, reschemed ENC coverage. The largest scale ENCs are being created along large portions of the coast before the next smaller scale ENCs are created. Cancellations will often follow the creation of new, reschemed ENC coverage. Progress of the ENC rescheming effort may be tracked on the Status of New NOAA ENCs.

Although it is preferred that new reschemed ENC data is available before the corresponding raster charts are canceled, there may be situations where this is not the case. As described in the "Paper and raster chart content is starting to differ from ENCs" section, below, the only updates NOAA is now applying to raster charts are those critical to navigation. If ENCs and the corresponding raster charts get too far out of sync, the associated charts may be identified for an earlier cancellation. NOAA is also looking at sales and download volumes over the past few years; a chart with low sales or downloads may be canceled earlier in the process.

NOAA will also update the List of Latest Chart Editions on www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov to indicate that the last edition of the chart has been published. There are two formats for this information, the PDF Dates of Latest Editions document and the HTML NOAA Chart Dates of Latest Editions webpage.

In the PDF, "(L)" is placed next to the chart number and the date on which it will be canceled will be shown in the "Can Date" column, as shown for chart 16543, below. When the chart is canceled six months later, the chart number will be marked with "(X)" and moved from its position in the list of active charts to a cumulative list of canceled charts (since 2018) that is appended to the end of the list of active charts, as shown for charts 14982 and 14983, below.

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