Chapter 6. Data
66 potentially be included in an SDI for the Arctic given the key drivers and com-
munities of interest that develop in the region.
6.2.7 US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Of-
fice of Coast Survey
NOAA’s Electronic Navigational Charts
ENC˝o are vector data sets that rep- resent NOAA’s newest and most powerful electronic charting product. NOAA
ENCs conform with the International Hydrographic Office IHO S-57 interna- tional exchange format, comply with the IHO ENC Product Specification, and
are provided with incremental updates that supply Notice to Mariners correc- tions and other critical changes. In addition to downloading single ENCs in
S-57 format, ENCs can be accessed via:
• ENC Direct
to GIS which allows users to display, query, and download all available base editions of NOAA ENC˝o data in a variety of GISCAD
formats, using Internet mapping service technology.
• NOAA ENC˝o Online
which optimizes the viewing of the entire ENC suite, using the display rules defined by the
IHO S-52 specifications for chart
content and display aspects of ECDIS. Both ENC Direct and ENC Online provide OCG WMS capabilities.
NOAA also provides the ability to access up-to-date nautical charts via the Of-
fice of Coast Survey ’s new
Chart Tile Service prototype. The NOAA Chart Tile
Service provides standardized nautical chart tilesets for the public, eliminating the need for application developers to regularly undergo the cumbersome pro-
cess of transforming NOAA BSB files into tilesets. It provides geo-referenced charts compatible with the Web Map Tile Specifications WMTS and Tile Map
Service Specification TMS. All tilesets are published on a weekly basis.
NOAA identified the following 10 datasets, which should be included in an Marine-SDI. To provide an idea of what datasets are important nationally, the
following list was derived from regional input from the US Northeast and Mid- Atlantic regions, as well as a national Coastal Zone Management survey con-
ducted by NOAA.
1. Marine Boundaries: jurisdictional boundaries, territorial sea, submerged
lands, agency jurisdictions. Maritime Limits and Boundaries for the United
Chapter 6. Data
67 States
are measured from the official U.S. baseline, recognized as the low- water line along the coast as marked on the NOAA nautical charts in
accordance with the articles of the Law of the Sea. The Office of Coast Survey depicts on its nautical charts the territorial sea 12 nm, contigu-
ous zone 24 nm, and exclusive economic zone 200 nm, plus maritime boundaries with adjacentopposite countries. Digital data is available in
a variety of formats, including a dynaminc OpenGIS˝o
Web Map Service WMS
which can be accessed online
.
2. Bathymetry: nearshore lidar, medium and high resolution. NOAA’s Na-
tional Center’s for Environmental Information NCEI archives data and
products that illustrate the depths and shapes of underwater terrain with underwater maps, digital elevation models, multibeam data, and more.
These include:
• Bathymetric Data Map Interface
• Digital Elevation Models
• ETOPO Gridded Relief Models
• International Hydrographic Organization Data Center for Digital Bathymetry
• Ocean and Coastal Mapping Data for Northeast U.S. Sandy Recovery
Many of these datasets, including those conducted by NOAA’s National Ocean Service NOS are publically available via REST services through
NOAA’s GeoPlatform
. Coastal topographic lidar datasets, including topo- bathy lidar is available from NOAA’s Office of Coastal Management’s
DigitalCoast.
3. Shoreline: NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey provides the Continually
Updated Shoreline Product CUSP and the National Shoreline through the Shoreline Data Explorer. CUSP is also available as an
OGC WMS .
4. Fishing Data: Content of the dataset: Vessel Trip Report and Vessel Mon-
itoring System databases in collaboration with commercial fishing stake- holders to illustrate the distribution timing, and intensity of commercial
fishing activity, with attributes for gear type and harvest species.
5. Marine Wildlife whales, birds, turtles, bats data: distribution, proba-
