Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) has awarded a $300,000 contract to Canadian vendor Caris to provide software to enable LINZ to store and manage nautical data in a “single authoritative database”, says a LINZ spokesperson.
One of LINZ’s functions is to produce official nautical charts. These exist in a variety of formats, both digital and paper-based.
Under a new system being implemented, the charts, drawn from hydrographic and nautical data, will continue to be available in both forms, but the process by which the data is compiled will be overhauled.
Currently, nautical charts in both paper and raster form and are updated fortnightly by the Notices to Mariners (NtM) process, under which seafarers receive emailed updates to charts.
The LINZ spokesperson says “The workflow management for the NtM process is paper-based and various other LINZ databases hold associated hydrographic and nautical information. Caris software will enable LINZ to store and manage data in a single authoritative database, from which different nautical charts and publications will be
produced.
“Workflow management will be integral to the Caris system, and other LINZ databases will be rationalised as part of the overarching Hydrographic Systems Implementation project.”
Caris will be installed by the end of the year and nautical products should be produced from mid-2008.