The Japan P&I Club has issued Bulletin regarding “ECDIS”, where it explains the functions, familiarization training and a few important points of ECDIS.
ECDIS has significantly changed conventional navigational watch-keeping methods, and may arguably be termed as a navigational watch revolution. However, Master, Officers and other Bridge team members must understand that trouble will not be far away if they make a single mistake when evaluating the information displayed by ECDIS or using ECDIS without completely understanding the ECDIS configuration.
In any case, as their dependence on such a convenient system increases, they must not forget that since the information being displayed is a digital display. If the team blindly accepts the displayed numbers, and does not continuously monitor them or compare them with the information obtained from other nautical instruments, and as a result makes a wrong judgement, the trouble caused will have a much larger impact on safe operation than the trouble caused by mistakes using other nautical instruments. Masters, Officers and other Bridge Members must also not forget that there may be sudden IT troubles such as the screen hanging or a sudden shut-down of the system, as experienced with PCs and other electronic devices.
The Club says that ECDIS Information Management, it is a “person” whose actions end up introducing viruses into a computer system. Hence, one must also build methods to prevent the invasion of these computer viruses.
Further, it is necessary to remind ourselves that lookout is the basis of the navigational watch, and the Bridge members using ECDIS must have complete knowledge of the system and pay close attention to it.
Furhter details may be found in the Loss Prevention Bulletin herebelow
Source: Japan P&I Club
