As the first month of 2024 comes to a close, it is only fitting to cast a retrospective glance at some of the key highlights IC-ENC achieved in 2023.

ENC services

IC-ENC Folio Growth

During 2023, IC-ENCs folio has grown significantly. In March we celebrated reaching 10,000 ENCs in the folio which was celebrated at the TC23_1 with a Danish ENC being the 10,000th cell. By the end of 2023, IC-ENCs folio has continued to grow, validating a total of 16,448 ENCs and completing the year with a folio in excess of 11,800 ENCs.

Daily Release of ENC Updates

Daily Releases were made available for IC-ENC VARs early 2023. This enabled the rapid release of validated S-57 ENC Updates to VARs, therefore reducing the release process time whilst maintaining data integrity and release checks. It is now possible for Priority S-57 Updates to be provided to IC-ENC, registered, validated, and released to VARs within 24 hours.

International Validation Team collaboration

During November the IC-ENC regional office validation team visited IC-ENC HQ. This enabled the team to build a strong team bond as well as enable training and sharing of knowledge. Training included S-57 validation best practice along with introducing the validation team to S-101 activities being conducted by IC-ENC.

ENC Conversion Support Service Launched

Following extensive research with UKHO/CARIS and membership engagement through a number of TCs, SC24 agreed the way forward for IC-ENC to support Members through the IC-ENC Conversion Readiness service.

ENC Audit Tool

During it’s first 12 months the ENC Audit Tool has highlighted areas for attention in the reporting processes of the distribution channel. Through working extremely quickly to act on findings and further issues, we now plan to implement automation of reports and more preventative controls to provide early alerts.

VAR Audit

An inaugural VAR Audit was conducted. This highlighted a number of areas where we rely on control-based measures to monitor compliance, rather than a preventative approach to support our VARs in performing within the terms of our agreement. A key point highlighted was the lack of assurance around PAYS certification. We were able to act on the observation of the audit to propose and publish a change to our Joint-RENC specification, which ensures VARs are supported in the monitoring of their PAYS solution providers.

S-100 Services

S-1XX Service Developments

IC-ENC has continued to develop the first generation of S-1XX services and S-128 generation during 2023 as the standards continue to change. We look forward to receiving more trial S-1XX datasets in 2024 and conducting trial services, beginning with the S-101 trial service with NL in Q1 2024. We will continue to iterate these services as the standards begin to stabilise towards the end of the year. IC-ENC has also developed the S-104 Registration Checks and draft S-101, S-102, S-104 and S-111 Metadata templates have been developed for Member review, to standardise the CATALOG.XML for minimum content.

S-104 & S-111 Batch Processing

IC-ENC have updated the DMD workflow tool to be able to ingest, register, validate and release S-104 and S-111 datasets whilst maintaining data group integrity and employing logic to maintain data throughput. Any set of S-104 or S-111 data can now be passed through IC-ENC systems, registration and integrity checks applied and released with minimal human intervention.

S-100 Product Development & Testing (PDT) License

IC-ENC has now released over 1,000 S-1XX trial datasets into the PDT scheme and has set up a recurring feedback loop to gain feedback on these datasets. The scheme has also recently been extended to include Members as signatories to share their data with each other.

Membership and community

Two New Members

In 2023, we welcomed two new Members to IC-ENC. Fiji joined as the 49th Member in July and Indonesia as the 50th Member in October.

Technical Conferences

In March, the first ever hybrid Technical Conference, was well received by delegates (52 in the room and 59 online). Content included the full package of the Conversion Readiness service and S-57 and S-1XX service developments, with BE, ID and UK sharing their production experiences of S-101. In October, 65 delegates attended the second TC of the year virtually to discuss Dual Fuel production, Industry updates and our Empowering Women in Hydrography secondee presented on her IC-ENC Knowledgebase project and the recommendations for improvements.

Steering Committee 24

In July, we held another successful Steering Committee meeting in Bristol, UK, where a total of 82 attendees joined. 46 in person and 36 online. The agenda was packed, covering topics such as ENC & S-10x services, Distribution, S-57 to S-101 Conversion and Production Support plans. At the end of the meeting, IC-ENC were thrilled to appoint Burak İnan as IC-ENC Chair, and Leendert Dorst as third Vice Chair alongside Michael Andrew and Pia Højgaard.

Training

IC-ENC delivered a wide range of successful training courses in 2023 to meet the needs of Members. In June, 206 learners attended the Introduction to S-100 Seminar. Later in the year 143 learners signed up for the S-57 to S-101 Conversion Training Course. Other training events include Industry partners holding bespoke seminars as requested by our Members and the IHO ENC Singapore Innovation lab conversion workshop.

We held our first face to face S-57 Validation training course since the Covid pandemic. This was held in December and was attended by 8 Members. Learners were shown how to assess S-57 ENCs and the validation process that IC-ENC undertake. S-101 learning and conversion readiness checks were also incorporated into the course.

Learning Management System

We currently have 404 active accounts on the LMS. There are now dedicated dashboards for Gridding and HD ENCs, with additional dashboards for S-10x being developed. Members are also submitting their own material to enrich the LMS whilst sharing their knowledge and experience with others.

Knowledgebases

The S-57 Knowledgebase remains up-to-date with the latest versions of 7Cs Analyzer and dKart Inspector. In October, we launched the S-100 Knowledgebase which contains the S-1XX ingest & registration. The ENC Conversion Knowledgebase has also just been launched, which includes conversion log messages from CARIS HPD software to help Members when they are converting from S-57 to S-101.

Looking ahead, these achievements will undoubtedly drive and motivate IC-ENC as we begin a new chapter.  As we reflect on the year gone by, it is clear that the ability to adapt, collaborate, and prioritise Member needs will remain paramount.

Here's to another year of remarkable achievements, global collaboration and shared victories!