The S-Mode is the standardised display for electronic navigation equipment which aims to decrease the burden of familiarisation when a seafarer steps aboard a new ship and is faced with unfamiliar navigation equipment. It’s been championed by The Nautical Institute since 2008 and has been discussed for over 10 years so far.
Equipment manufacturers recognise the need for greater standardisation and in a recent NI webinar, Richard Doherty, CIRM’s chief technical officer, says manufacturers are working towards standard features that will be always on. This should allow existing equipment to be updated through software updates, speeding up standardisation across the global fleet.
In the webinar recording, you will hear from Richard Doherty – CIRM, Nick Lemon from AMSA and David Patraiko from The Nautical Institute, who explain:
- The approach to S-Mode
- The operational issues it seeks to address
- Potential solutions such as standard icons for key functions, logical grouping of information and simple operator operations/user settings
- The framework that will propose that manufacturers agree to standardise the way navigational displays present information.
Specifically, Doherty says that IMO will discuss the draft S-Mode Guidelines early in 2018; the final version could be issued in late 2019.
Before then, we need mariners’ feedback to make sure we get it right. The industry has proposed a wide range of new icons to represent key navigation tasks.
An online survey by The Nautical Institute is currently open to test mariners’ reactions https://tinyurl.com/guessicons
To find out more about S-Mode view NI Navigator issue 14.
