{"id":168675,"date":"2016-07-15T11:43:44","date_gmt":"2016-07-15T15:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noaacoastsurvey.wordpress.com\/?p=168675"},"modified":"2016-07-15T11:43:44","modified_gmt":"2016-07-15T15:43:44","slug":"updating-digital-nautical-charts-is-faster-and-easier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nauticalcharts.noaa.gov\/updates\/updating-digital-nautical-charts-is-faster-and-easier\/","title":{"rendered":"Updating digital nautical charts is faster and easier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coast Survey introduces new service for downloading raster chart updates<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

We click on our smart phone map app, and we can immediately see any place on land. We turn on our boat\u2019s navigational system and a nautical chart appears. Where do the apps get their maps and charts, and how often are they updated? Let\u2019s look deeper into the chart services\u2026
\nRecreational boaters use chart plotters and computer-based navigation systems, including tablets and mobile devices \u2014 at last count, there are over 60 mobile apps \u2014 as well as web mapping applications. These commercial products often use privately produced charts derived from official NOAA raster navigational charts<\/a> (NOAA RNC\u00ae). In recent years, larger manufacturers have switched to using NOAA raster charts themselves. Until recently, the systems had to work through a major problem: each of NOAA\u2019s thousand charts is a huge file that takes bandwidth and time to upload. So the entrepreneurs developed work-arounds, especially when they needed to update the charts. Many of them cut NOAA chart files into more manageable \u201ctiles.\u201d Many didn\u2019t update these chart tiles for months, or sometimes even up to a year, despite NOAA issuing updates weekly, often because of time and storage space problems.
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\n\"chartCoast Survey listened to the navigation electronics industry, and we collaborated with them to create new chart tile products and services. In December 2015 we announced a prototype<\/a> of the NOAA Chart Tile Service<\/a>, which \u2014 because of the smaller file size \u2014 allowed commercial web mapping applications to quickly access official up-to-date NOAA tiles (sections of nautical charts) while online. The prototype was an immediate success, with the tiles garnering 7.3 million hits in the first three weeks of availability (compared to 1.4 million RNC downloads for the month.) The chart tile service proved so popular that we made it official in April 2016.
\nThings are now getting even better. On July 15 we introduced an offline<\/em> tile service, which will enable chart users to quickly download and update only the chart tile sets that have recently changed and use the tiles without having to be online. This will dramatically reduce the bandwidth needed for vessels to keep their chart suite up to date. Maybe more important than reducing bandwidth is having the tile charts available where there is no bandwidth at all<\/em>. Having the tile charts in your device’s memory means you can use them where you have NO internet connectivity (i.e. no cellular G3 connection).<\/p>\n

TECHNICAL SUMMARY<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Release 1.0 was released December 7, 2015 with the following features.<\/em>
\nOnline single chart tilesets<\/strong>
\nProvides the following capabilities:<\/p>\n