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How To Set Ecdis Safety Parameters

This document discusses how to set safety parameters in ECDIS, including: Safety depth is set as the draft plus squat, UKC, and tide height minus draft. For a vessel with 12.5m draft at 10 knots, safety depth is calculated as 15m. Shallow depth/contour is set to the vessel's draft, which is 12.5m. The nearest contour of 15m will highlight shallow areas within that range in blue. Deep contour is typically set at 4 times the vessel's draft, so 60m for a 12.5m draft vessel. Spot soundings can eliminate depths above a set level (e.g. 60m) to reduce chart

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Clarence Pietersz
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9K views

How To Set Ecdis Safety Parameters

This document discusses how to set safety parameters in ECDIS, including: Safety depth is set as the draft plus squat, UKC, and tide height minus draft. For a vessel with 12.5m draft at 10 knots, safety depth is calculated as 15m. Shallow depth/contour is set to the vessel's draft, which is 12.5m. The nearest contour of 15m will highlight shallow areas within that range in blue. Deep contour is typically set at 4 times the vessel's draft, so 60m for a 12.5m draft vessel. Spot soundings can eliminate depths above a set level (e.g. 60m) to reduce chart

Uploaded by

Clarence Pietersz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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HOW TO SET ECDIS SAFETY PARAMETERS = SAFETY DEPTH +

SHALLOW CONTOUR - Abhishek Sabharwal

SAFETY DEPTH / SAFETY CONTOUR:

Safety depth is considered to be the minimum depth required


in which the vessel can safely navigate and any depths lower
than that might compromise the safety of the vessel. For all
practical purposes the safety depth is determined as follows;

M.V ABCD
Draft (static) - 12.5 mtrs
Speed - 10 kts
Assuming block coefficient : 0.7 (to simplify things)

Squat (for confined waters): Cb x V(Square) / 50


= 0.7 x 10 x 10 / 50 = 1.40 mtrs.

Assuming Height of Tide: 1.4 mtrs

Ukc (required as per individual company policy) : 20 % of


static draft (in coastal waters)
= 20 x 12.5 /
100 = 2.5 mtrs.
Safety Depth :
= Draft + Squat + Ukc - Ht. of Tide
= 12.5 + 1.40 + 2.5 - 1.4 = 15.0 mtrs.

SHALLOW DEPTH / SHALLOW CONTOUR :

Shallow depth setting is considered to be the grounding depth


i.e. the vessel will run aground at that depth.
Therefore, for all practical purposes, the shallow depth is
considered to be draft of the vessel.
i.e. Draft=12.5 mtr then Shallow depth=12.5 mtr.

Shallow depth=12.5 mtr;


Nearest available contour=15mtr (as there are no 12.5 mtr
contours).

Which implies that when the shallow depth is set to 12.5


mtrs(~~15.0 mtrs) then all the areas falling inside this depth
range will turn into dark blue colour, thus reminding the
navigator of its shallow nature.

Lets see an example as to how do such a setting affect the


appearance of an ECDIS chart.....

BEFORE (SHALLOW CONTOUR =0)


AFTER (SHALLOW CONTOUR=15.0 MTR)
DEEP CONTOUR:

Whereas Deep contour for all practical purposes is considered


as a contour depth at which the shallow water effects might
start having an effect on the manoeuvrability of the ship,
which is taken as
Deep Contour: 4 x draft of the vessel (standard accepted
value)
i.e Draft=12.5 mtr ; Deep contour=4x12.5= 60 mtrs.

SPOT SOUNDINGS:

Spot soundings doesnt form a mandatory requirement of an


ECDIS feature and thereby is just an additional feature which
might be found on certain ECDIS make types such as
TRANSAS.
If the spot sounding on an ECDIS is set to , say 60mtrs,then
all depths on the chart greater 60 mtrs will get dissapeared and
all those less than equal to 60 mtrs will be displayed in `bold`
on the chart, as shown below.The main purpose of spot
soundings is to eliminate clutter or unnecessary information
from the chart in terms of depths.

BEFORE (SPOT SOUNDING=0 MTRS)


AFTER (SPOT SOUNDING = 60 MTRS)
In the above figure we can clearly see that how setting a spot
sounding removes unnecessary depths from the chart thereby
reducing chart clutter.

NOTE:

It is very important to understand that the settings of the


above stated parameters is very important as it causes the
safety frame/guard zone to trigger alarms for the vessel while
entering these depths. Which implies that if these settings are
not correct then no alarms will be triggered or will not be
triggered in time, and which might lead to catastrophic results.

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