Syntactic-level integration and display of multiple domains’ S-100-based data for e-navigation

Abstract

In the maritime field, interest in the utilization of multiple and various domains' data for provision of relevant, accurate and timely information ensuring the safety and security of navigation at sea has been growing. Discussion, for example, of the implementation of e-navigation, a new maritime service paradigm introduced by the International Maritime Organization, is ongoing. E-navigation enables and facilitates the on- and off-shore exchange, sharing and utilization of marine and marine-related domains' data in support of users' decision-making. For consistent exchange and sharing of marine and marine-related data in the e-navigation environment, the International Hydrographic Organization's S-100 has been adopted as the baseline of the common maritime data structure. S-100 provides common data models for consistent definition of data elements representing data contents. To that end, it supports syntactic-level data interoperability among S-100 applied e-navigation systems. However, the current S-100 does not provide methods or models for formal representation of data semantics or semantic-level harmonization of data. Therefore, current e-navigation-system efforts are focusing on the utilization of multiple domains' data at the syntactic-level. To provide relevant information for various marine activities, e-navigation systems should be able to handle various domains' data and integrate them at the syntactic-level. In this paper, we introduce a method by which multiple domains' S-100-based data can be integrated according to the characteristics of such data. Additionally, we present a method for consistent display and integration of multiple domains' S-100-based data. These methods promise to greatly facilitate S-100-based e-navigation systems' handling of multiple and various domains' data.