Patch Technology News

NPREP: Pre-Exercise Public Outreach Events

LOS ANGELES — The Coast Guard announces its National Preparedness Response Exercise Program (NPREP) pre-exercise Public Outreach events to be held Sept. 13, 2011 in Ventura, Calif., free of charge. Government and Industry experts will be facilitating seminars on three topics of interest: Deepwater Horizon Response, Oiled Wildlife Care Network, and Sensitive Sites Strategy, from 5 p.m. until 8 p.m. Static displays such as communications trailers, a HASS-like boat, Patch technology for vessels, off-shore deployment of a Vessel of Opportunity Skimming System (VOSS) from Coast Guard Cutter George Cobb, and others, will be available for viewing from 2 p.m. until 6 p.m. The seminars and displays will be held at Robert J.

Smooth Sailing

The entire suite of 1,000 official NOAA nautical charts has been available in digital raster form since 1995. These high quality, full color, geo-referenced images of NOAA's paper charts are made for use in computer-based navigation systems and work with GPS or other electronic positioning systems. They are produced jointly by NOAA and Maptech, Inc. under a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA). Mariners quickly adopted raster nautical charts. Their rapid adoption was aided by first-rate navigation software available from many companies at an affordable price. Today, the raster charts outsell NOAA's paper charts by eight to five.