We have some methods to lead ships to their destinations safely, and among them, the main tool for the purpose is a chart. The modern nautical charts have accepted the demand of voyagers to secure voyage for more than 500 years. Charts started with only description of slight depth and shoreline, and then been refined to become modern nautical charts.
With the appearance of ENC, the Electronic Navigational Chart, the demand of paper charts has decreased. And now ENCs take over the leading role of charts. The main reason for this trend is that the SOLAS Convention imposes the obligation of ECDIS carriage on the ocean liners. For those equipping ECDIS onboard, paper charts become unnecessary under a certain condition.
I hope that still developing ENCs would inherit DNA of the modern paper charts refined during their history.
This paper is a report of the “Future of Nautical Charts” reported at the symposium in Nov. 2021, with some revisions and some considerations.
