Chartworx Holland, News October 2005

Chartworx press release

Chartworx Holland develops GIS to support supervision of adherence to environmental laws to protect the environment in the Wadden Sea.

Since 1980 the Netherlands Wadden Sea is protected according to the key planning decision Wadden Sea (PKB), also called the Wadden Sea Memorandum, which is a national physical planning document defining the overall objectives of conservation, management and use of the Wadden Sea.

The Ramsar Convention 1971 is a world wide treaty for the conservation of wetlands: shallow open waters and any land regularly or intermittently covered or saturated by water. The Dutch Wadden Sea Memorandum Area is a Ramsar site.

The EC Bird Directive 1979 aims at the protection of all species of naturally occurring birds in the territory of the member states. According to the Bird Directive, the Dutch Wadden Sea Ramsar site (and the German and the Danish) has been designated as special protection area (SPA).)

The EC Habitat Directive 1992 aims at the conservation of habitats of wild flora and fauna in the member states. Major parts of the Wadden Sea have been designated under the Habitats Directive.

The Service Centre of the official governmental body tasked with co-ordinating the co-operation between the different governmental organisations responsible for supervising the adherence to the regulations and laws of the Wadden Sea.(Wadden Handhavings Overleg) has awarded a contract to Chartworx Holland for the development of a GIS to support their task. This Geographical Area Integral Supervision and Information System will provide information, per designated area, of the applicable regulations and laws, the organisation(s) authorised to take action against those infringing the laws or the regulations, and procedures to process incidents. The system is also aimed to support tracing and search departments. All incident evidence, including tracking information of ARPA and AIS contacts, will be logged and stored in a database. Also documents, spreadsheets, photographs, video and sound fragments may be displayed and logged. The system can be interfaced to all navigation sensors and support C-MAP CM 93/3 ISO 19379 certified digital cartography. In future the system will be extended with facilities to automatically generate official records of evidence and other applicable reports and be interfaced to intra web or similar. It is the intention that vessels of the relevant organisations that are also involved in surveillance of the Wadden Sea are being fitted with this system.

Source Chartworx Holland BV