Datum; General; Paper Charts; Electronic Sea Charts - Furuno FMD-3200 Operator's Manual

2.10

Datum

2.10.1

General

Datum is a mathematical model of the earth based on which a sea chart is produced.
If the datum of a position sensor and that of a sea chart are different, a transformation
has to be made somewhere in the system. Not doing so can result in errors of several
sea miles. The difference between two datum is never constant, but depends on po-
sition. This means that the difference between WGS-84 and local datum, generally
used in paper charts, is not generally valid with electronic sea charts.
2.10.2

Paper charts

Datum used in paper charts have been traditionally national datum for historical rea-
sons. Many paper charts do not have a marked datum, therefore compatibility with
electronic charts may be complicated. In some paper charts, the correction terms are
printed in lieu of datum, for correction of the WGS-84 system satellite locations. The
correction terms are usable but only with the paper chart in question.
2.10.3

Electronic sea charts

• The ENC vector material has to be produced by a National Hydrographic Office in
the WGS-84 datum.
• The ARCS (raster) material includes polynomials for each chart, making it possible
for the ECS system to solve the difference between the WGS-84 datum and the lo-
cal datum with an accuracy sufficient for authority responsibility. In some charts, the
mentioned difference is not known with sufficient accuracy, resulting in displaying a
message in the Permanent warning box when displayed in ARCS compatible sys-
tems.
2.10.4

Positioning devices and datum

In early days of electronic positioning devices, datum received little attention because
the commonly used systems utilized special charts (like Decca charts). Later on, data
output was added to these systems, but still no attention was paid to datum and the
position errors were considered as an inaccuracy of the system. With the spread of
the GPS, however, datum has become better known. An accurate position is of no val-
ue if co-ordinates are in a wrong datum. GPS satellites utilize the WGS-84 datum.
2.10.5

ECDIS and datum

The ECDIS uses ENC material, produced to standards using WGS-84 datum. Posi-
tioning devices connected to the ECDIS must work in the WGS-84 datum. IMO re-
quires that the ECDIS must give an alert if the datum of a positioning device is not the
WGS-84.
2. OPERATIONAL OVERVIEW
2-21