Track: Oceanography, Coastal Zone, Marine Resources
An Automated Approach for Creating GIS-Ready Marine Data from the NIMA Notice to Mariner (NOTOM) System
Peter John LaPlacaAn application was developed to process National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) Automated Notice to Mariner (NOTOM) information into GIS-ready data for use with Esri's ArcInfo and ArcView GIS software. The Mariner Data Extractor (MDE), written in C++, allows users to interactively and automatically create GIS-ready marine data from several NOTOM sources. These sources include broadcast warnings, mobile offshore drilling units, and antishipping (piracy) information. The MDE processes raw NOTOM information, extracts the geographic coordinates and associated aspatial attributes, and intelligently determines which messages are point, line, or polygon features. The application then formats the data in the ArcInfo GENERATE format for points, lines, and polygons. It also creates associated aspatial attribute files that can be joined or related using AML. In addition, users can categorize types of messages based on keywords of particular interest such as messages containing the words "sunk" or "hijacked." The initial requirement for the MDE was for it to be able to process NOTOM messages with an 85 percent accuracy, meaning that for every 100 messages, 85 would be identified as point, line, or area features and be processed and attributed correctly. Actual results were much better than this - 96 percent for broadcast warnings and 100 percent for mobile offshore drilling units and antishipping. Once the NOTOM information was processed by the MDE, a series of AMLs were used to create ArcInfo coverages for display and analysis in ArcInfo or ArcView GIS.
Peter John LaPlaca
TASC Inc.
12100 Sunset Hills Road
Reston, VA 20190-3233
USA
Telephone: 703 834-5000 x2098
Fax: 703 318-7900
E-mail: pjlaplaca@tasc.com