CARIS is pleased to announce that, for the first time, the latest editions of the German List of Lights have been successfully published by the The Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency of Germany (BSH) using the CARIS HPD Publications Module.

CARIS HPD Publications Module accesses relevant nautical information which is already stored within an organization's HPD database. It helps users publish and maintain Nautical Publications such as Notices to Mariners, Lists of Lights, Sailing Directions, Lists of Radio Signals and Lists of Wrecks, etc. from their common database that is also used for the production of electronic navigational charts (ENCs), paper charts and other cartographic products.

BSH has traditionally published and maintained the Lists of Lights information independent from their production database, which caused data duplication and storage problems. Two databases had to be corrected to keep different products up-to-date. Furthermore, the workflow from data extraction up to final printing approval was prone to errors as a result of several intermediate working steps and different data formats used.

Therefore, BSH was eager to reduce data redundancy and streamline their workflow by using the same source data for all of their products (ENCs, Paper Charts and List of Lights Publication). "Since the lights information is already stored in CARIS HPD, we at BSH decided to employ the Publications Module for the production of the List of Lights product," says Jens Schröder-Fürstenberg, Head of Nautical Information Service Section . This product consists of two publications, one for each area, the Baltic and the North Sea.