S411 ice charts for ECDIS

S-411 is primarily intended for encoding the extent and nature of Sea Ice for navigational purpose.

S-411 has a long history, in December 2013 the first operational S-411 ice charts were available and viewable in GIS programs. The approval of the product specification was in June 2014 and as of December 2015 many operational ice charts were available in S-411 in NRT. But up till today there is still no S-411 capable ECDIS available (although test systems exist).

Version 1.2, approved in 2014 is fully based on :

S-411 is a vector product using S-100 Level 3a geometry which supports 0-, 1-, and 2-dimentional objects (points, line strings, polygons). The application schema contains 28 feature types with their attributes, enumerations and is based on the Ice Objects Catalogue. The portrayal specification is based on Styled Layer Descriptors (SLD), follows OGC standards and supports 3 polygon portrayals, one according to the vessels ice capabilities, the second and third one being the WMO ice concentration/stages of development colour codes. Portrayals for line and point objects follow the WMO symbology and are implemented using SVG-graphics.

The actual S-100 version 5.0 has more than 700 pages compared to the 329 pages of version 1.0 and Version 1.0 also did not specify the portrayal rules. Therefore a new version 1.2 is developed in 2024/2025, so that it adheres to the newest S-100 specification. A following version 2.0 is already planned which should also streamline the ice objects catalog (this includes throwing out some legacy objects which are not used any more and some additions to attributes, etc.)

further information: