Text of the Article

NOAA's Electronic Nautical Charts

By David B. Enabnit, Technical Director, Office of Coast Survey, NOAA

In Response: Our January/February '99 issue carried an opinion piece by Dr. Joseph Carnevali of Navionics concerning an agreement between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Maptech. The article was entitled "NOAA and Electronic Charts: Market or Monopoly." Below, a NOAA official explains the agency's novel public/private partnership.

The nautical chart is the fundamental tool of marine navigation. It depicts water depths, aids to navigation, obstructions, traffic control schemes and other information critical to the safe and efficient use of the nation’s waterways, and to the protection of our marine environment.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is charged by law to produce the national suite of nautical charts. This responsibility comes from the irreplaceable role that marine transportation plays in the nation’s interstate and foreign commerce. Ninety-eight percent (by weight) of the United States' foreign commerce travels by ship ($1/2 trillion of cargoes annually). Fifty percent of those cargoes are oil or other hazardous substances. There is a roughly comparable amount of domestic shipping. The nautical chart is an indispensable part of this marine transportation infrastructure.

NOAA compiles the official nautical charts for the U.S. Carriage of these charts is mandatory for some vessels such as those high value, high risk ships carrying our foreign and interstate commerce. Requiring carriage of the official chart helps to insure that those mariners have the best available information and helps to insure that vessels sharing our restricted waterways are making critical navigation decisions based on the same information. Mariners may carry whatever additional charts, publications and navigation tools they find useful.

The Emergence of Electronic Navigation

The appearance of inexpensive computers and the Global Positioning System has allowed sophisticated electronic navigation systems to emerge. This technology is revolutionizing marine navigation and is providing the greatest advance in navigation safety since radar.

NOAA’s responsibility for charting continues to apply in this electronic age. To meet this responsibility, NOAA has been deeply involved in developing electronic charts, systems and standards since the early 1980’s. Results from this work include the International Maritime Organization’s standards for Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems (ECDIS) and the International Hydrographic Organization’s standards for Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs) plus recently adopted standards for Raster Chart Display Systems (RCDS) and Raster Nautical Charts (RNCs). Another result has been a national suite of raster nautical charts and, in early 1999, vector charts that meet the standards for ENCs but which are not merely copies of the paper chart.

The RNCs and ENCs, which are produced by NOAA collaboratively with the private sector, will serve as the official charts that may be carried in place of paper charts. This "official" status applies to the regulated vessels for whom chart carriage is mandatory - a market estimated at 1 percent of the potential market for electronic charts. The 99 percent of the market that is unregulated may use any public or private product which meets their needs.

The NOAA Public/Private Partnership

NOAA considered many methods to produce and distribute digital charts for electronic navigation systems including: contracting, free distribution for anyone to make into a product; cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs), and the possible certification of private products. The CRADA was selected as the method which offered the greatest flexibility to respond to rapidly evolving needs at the lowest risk and cost to the taxpayer. This novel public/private partnership has attracted a lot of interest. Hopefully, this paper will satisfy some of that curiosity.

A CRADA is a public/private partnership in which the government may contribute equipment, personnel, intellectual property ... but not direct funding, and the private partner may contribute anything including funds. CRADAs come from the Federal Technology Transfer Act to encourage the further development and then the commercialization of federal R&D. CRADAs explicitly permit the establishment of exclusive arrangements in order to call forth the investment and creativity of the private sector. Previous attempts by Congress to enable technology transfer had determined that this was essential.

Contracting was not selected as the method to provide electronic charts because funds were not available. It would also require public funding of all subsequent research and would make the government set the direction for product evolution rather than the market. Free distribution was not selected for the official product because of the need for guaranteed availability, in perpetuity, in all waters, of a consistent, timely, correct product meeting standards and providing liability protection. Further government involvement and taxpayer expense would have been needed. The certification of privately produced products was not selected because government certification of private products and acceptance of liability is not practiced in the U.S. unless there is a compelling public purpose for doing so. There is no such need here as the data already arise naturally from NOAA’s surveying and data base management activities.

So How Does This Partnership Work?

NOAA competitively awarded its electronic chart CRADA to BSB Electronic Charts (subsequently acquired by Maptech, Inc.) which was one of 37 companies that expressed interest. The agreement calls for NOAA and Maptech to work collaboratively to bring certain technology to a commercially usable level and then to practice that technology on the NOAA data. It covers electronic charts, chart data, systems, software and other related matters, and is really about the entire infrastructure to support electronic navigation. Continued development of products and technology was also agreed to.

Under the agreement, Maptech was granted exclusive access to NOAA digital chart data and certain technology such as a patented image compression method and processes for updating raster charts. At their own risk and expense, Maptech will make the official national suite of RNCs and ENCs in collaboration with NOAA, and profit or lose by the market success of their work. While this exclusivity has been criticized, it is really much the same as any competitively awarded contract where the winner has some exclusive right, e.g. to sell the government a quantity of equipment or to perform a particular service, and to profit by the result.

In exchange for this exclusivity, NOAA specified some obligations and safeguards. For example, Maptech is required to produce all charts (not just the profitable ones); to meet NOAA standards; to issue new editions every time NOAA does; to put in place an update service; to make the results openly available to all at an affordable price; to work towards the peak of distribution rather than the peak of profitability; and to do this in perpetuity. NOAA also negotiated a cap on the retail price of all products to protect the public, and set performance measures for things like turnaround time. Additionally, Maptech pays NOAA to support further R&D on electronic charting. Maptech’s obligations are substantial and in no way can it be said that they are getting the data for free.

Thus NOAA has leveraged the economic value of the public’s data to meet the national need rather than using taxpayer funds. The asset is being managed to achieve the benefit for which the public funded it. It sometimes seems contradictory that we would be outraged if a real estate developer tried to build condominiums on the rim of the Grand Canyon because it was "public property". Yet we don’t recognize that the public’s intellectual property is also an asset that should be managed to fully achieve the public goals for which is was funded, and only then to consider other uses such as other private commercial exploitation.

The Outcome

The outcome of this partnership has been extremely favorable. BSB and Maptech, both American-owned small businesses, have more than met their responsibilities. The resulting raster charts are widely available, of high quality and very affordably priced. The product is self-supporting from sales rather than being taxpayer subsidized; yet NOAA has sufficient control to see that the navigation needs of commercial mariners for an official chart are met. The working relationship has been truly collaborative with none of the adversarial aspects of a contract or a standards/certification process.

R&D has continued, partly funded by Maptech, and will result in an on-line, weekly, electronic update service for the raster charts in early 1999. Other work has been done on vector data and official vector ENCs will be available in 1999. A substantial network of Value Added Developers was established by Maptech and is producing outstanding navigation software - again at no risk or expense to the taxpayer. The guaranteed availability of high quality, affordable, official data coming from the CRADA has helped reduce the risk for these software developers.

A Balance Among Multiple Interests

In providing digital nautical charts, NOAA has worked to guarantee that mariner’s needs would be met while balancing many interests. For example, when making digital charts available for free was considered, software producers supported the idea but other data producers worried that free data would put them out of business, and retail chart sales agents did not want one of their products eliminated. When NOAA considered certifying private data (policy issues aside), mariners were dismayed that NOAA could provide the data but might back away in favor of suppliers that may or may not choose to stay in the business, may or may not supply all charts, and with quality and content controlled by an arms-length certification process. Other data providers were uncomfortable that such a special status might be granted to some data.

Vector ENC data will be released through the NOAA/Maptech CRADA in 1999. This will allow an integrated package of official vector, raster, Coast Pilot, and update services to be provided to mariners. "Exclusivity" will again be used to take advantage of the economic value of the data to pay for the products. This approach fully supports the government’s interests of working cooperatively with the private sector, and having recipients of public services pay for them rather than using general tax revenues. It also provides sufficient control for NOAA to guarantee that commercial and other mariner’s needs for an official electronic chart is met.

Marine transportation will continue to be of huge importance to the economy of the nation and the protection of the marine environment. NOAA is committed to producing and distributing navigation products that keep pace with advances in technology and to providing mariners the best in navigation safety. CRADAs are an additional tool with which NOAA can flexibly combine government and private-sector capabilities to meet those needs.

ME