Web-based system for electronic navigational charts using GML and SVG

Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs) are official nautical charts which are equivalent to paper charts with supplementary information. Although their main purpose is to be used for the safe navigation of ships, they also contain much information on coasts and seas which may be interesting to ordinary people. However, there is no easy way to access them because of their specialized data format, access method and visualization. This paper proposes a Web-based system for the access and services of ENCs, which makes use of the Geography Markup Language (GML) and the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). It accepts ENCs coded in the S-57 format as the source of coast and sea information, and then adopts GML as a coding and data transporting mechanism, database as a storage and query system, and SVG as a visualization means on the Web. By using the system, ordinary people can easily access coast and sea information contained in the ENCs. To validate the feasibility of proposed system, we implement a prototype system, and then conduct several test runs