In the month of June 2014, IHO has released New Editions of the documents related to S57 ENC produciton and S58 Recommended Enc Validation Check
In this document the main changes are ' Specifications for encoding Virtual Ais Aid to Navigation '. This document gives a detailed description on how to encode the Navigational Aids fitted with AIS. As the AIS technology is being used widely and some of the existing Buoys or Beacons are fitted with this instrument, encoding of AIS will be helpful to the mariner for voyage planning. In this regard, HSSC has suggested to encode the AIS for the existing NavAids in the attribute 'INFORM' for the respective MASTER Object.
HSSC has also recommended that If it is required to encode a Virtual AIS in an ENC, it should be done using the Object Class NEWOBJ and a new check has been added in the 'S57 Recommended Enc Validation Check.' Now its time for the ENC production softwares to upgrade with this additional validation tool.
