Study on GIS-based building of S-57 data models

摘要

The current situation that almost all of popular GIS softwares do not support normal data format of Electronic Navigation Chart (ENC) based on the IHO S-57 transfer standard, has seriously frustrated data interchange and share between Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). As an attempt, therefore, to transform S-57 data into the data format supported by GIS may be one of the promising techniques to integrate ECDIS and GIS. Keeping the objective in mind, this paper proposed a methodology of building S-57 data models based on a GIS platform. Taking Maplnfo as an example, four steps of building S-57 data models were presented: 1. Data transformation between S-57 spatial objects and Maplnfo spatial features; 2. Data transformation between S-57 feature objects and Maplnfo attribute data; 3. Transformation of relationship between spatial objects and feature objects of S-57; 4. Transformation and storage of descriptive information of data sets. The data transformation from S-57 to Maplnfo data format was achieved by programming with Visual C++ based on MapX 5.0. Having transformed into the Maplnfo data format, the S-57 ENC data can be exchanged with other GIS platforms. The feasibility of the proposed methodology was examined through the ENC data. The results indicated that the proposed methodology succeeded in solving the problem that popular GIS softwares do not support the S-57 ENC data format.