Phil Thompson

Dr Phil Thompson is a PhD naval architect. He served as a professor of ocean engineering at Virginia Tech, USA, in his early twenties. He has been employed by BMT for over 30 years and has been MD of several BMT companies since 1994. He has led a number of pioneering breakthroughs and has published extensively in the areas of specialist ship data acquisition, blue- and brown-water navigation simulation and autonomous navigation. He currently leads the BMT simulation training business lines including REMBRANDT, the world’s leading specialist navigation simulator suite.

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Presentation

The Universal Hydrographic Data Model: A key enabler for degree four MASS

The next generation Universal Hydrographic Data Model (UHDM S-100) is inherently more flexible than the current S-57 IHO standard for digital hydrographic data. S57 has been in use since 1992 and was last updated in 2000. S-100 offers provision for richer, granular gridded data and imagery, time varying and machine-readable data, enhanced metadata, and multiple coding formats, all essential for MASS. In November 2022, the International Hydrographic Office published its Roadmap for S-100 Implementation - a study led by the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) and constitutes a transition plan aimed at the regular and harmonized production and dissemination of S-100 based products. In this presentation, Phil Thompson (BMT) & Mark Casey (UKHO) explain why current navigation products are not fit for purpose and how next generation S—100 navigation standards can provide the level of data to achieve a step change in situational awareness needed to support Degree four MASS. They will outline how S-100 navigation data has already been integrated and tested onboard the AI and machine learning software stack of a MASS. The authors then demonstrate how S-100 data for bathymetry, dynamic water heights and surface currents is already supporting precision e-navigation, demonstrating the data integrity needed to support fully autonomous ships of the future.