The UK Hydrographic Office has announced the phased withdrawal of its paper charts to conclude in late 2026. This withdrawal includes digital facsimiles of its paper charts known as raster charts. These are currently available through Marine Digimap‘s Chart Roam and Marine Download applications.
EDINA is aware that the Raster Charts are very popular. As a consequence of the Hydrographic Office announcement, OceanWise (who supply the marine data available through Digimap) is urgently considering how best to support users of the Raster Charts and Raster Charts XL following their withdrawal. One option is to develop alternative raster charts through various means. You can read more about OceanWise’s approach to this on their website.
As a supplier of marine data to the academic sector, EDINA would like to gather feedback from Digimap users about the marine mapping requirements of the research and teaching community to feed into OceanWise’s review of the forthcoming change. If you would like to share your views on this, please drop us a line on digimap@ed.ac.uk
