Paul Burton

Paul Burton has 40 years of experience in the hydrographic domain at the UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO). In 2023 he took up the role of MASS technical engagement manager. In this role, he has represented the UKHO in the maritime autonomous domain, ensuring that maritime geospatial navigation standards, geospatial data provision and legislative requirements, both nationally and internationally, are recognized and addressed. This has included chairing the IHO MASS Navigation Project Team. Other areas of expertise covered during his career are deep-water surveying capability, bathymetric processing techniques, specialist underwater navigation products and the development of S-57 and S-100 hydrographic data standards.

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Presentation

The challenge of maritime navigation data to support autonomus shipping

The navigation data of today is primarily designed to support human decision-making to conduct navigation planning and execution. To support increasing autonomy within the navigation domain, data needs to be machine readable and machine intelligible. While much of the content of the core navigational products, such as the electronic navigation chart (ENC), are machine readable, there is a wealth of ancillary information, which contains important information to support situational awareness, that may prove much more challenging for an autonomous system to assimilate. The presentation will explore some of the challenges and potential solutions for data producers and developers of autonomous navigation systems.