This paper explores the impact of the Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) on the safety of navigation and seafarers’ professional practices. As ECDIS has become the primary tool for navigation, its proper use is critical for ensuring safe maritime operations. Drawing on data from a questionnaire completed by 154 active seafarers, this research investigates how ECDIS influences situational awareness, the use and management of safety settings, training adequacy, and system-related challenges. The findings reveal that while most respondents recognise ECDIS as a tool that enhances navigational safety, significant concerns remain regarding human error, insufficient training, and inconsistent application of safety settings such as the safety contour. Additionally, steering errors during restricted water manoeuvres and system crashes emerged as recurrent safety concerns. The study highlights the need for improved standardisation, targeted training, and more effective integration of human and technological elements to ensure optimal ECDIS use. The results offer actionable insights for enhancing ECDIS implementation and maritime safety standards.
The Global Navigations Satellite Systems (GNSS) have been evolved into an essential infrastructure of modern civilisation, a public goods, and enabler of rapidly growing number of technology and socio-economic applications. However, GNSS applications often lack fundamental details on GNSS Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT services performance to define and determine their Quality of Service (QoS). The lack of alignment with the core GNSS PNT deprives GNSS applications of assessing the risks of the GNSS PNT utilisation, thus leaving GNSS applications unable to prepare alternatives and mitigate the causes of GNSS PNT performance disruptions. Here we contributed to solution of the problem with the introduction and long-term performance assessment of the risk model of ionospheric-caused GNSS positioning degradation. Called the Probability of Occurrence (PoO), our team defined the risk model of GNSS positioning degradation caused by ionospheric conditions based on the long term observations of occurrences of degraded GNSS positioning performance. In the process of the GNSS risk model validation, the long-term PoO risk models are developed using the annual 2014 stationary GNSS horizontal positioning error observations derived from the GNSS pseudoranges collected at the International GNSS Service (IGS) reference stations situated in polar (Iqaluit, Canada) and sub-equatorial regions (Darwin, Australia). Two GNSS risk models are compared for similarity using statistical methods of Hausdorff distance and Cramér–von Mises statistical test. Research results show that two GNSS risk models are spatially agnostic, since no significant difference in two long-term GNSS risk models is found. The research results supports the conclusion of generality of the PoO GNSS risk model, and its ability to serve GNSS applications developers, operators, and users in determination of the QoS of particular GNSS applications.
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