1. IHO S-121 Standard on Maritime Limits and Boundaries
S-121 Maritime Limits and Boundaries
Status report
Louis Maltais
Serge Lévesque
Canadian Hydrographic Service
10th HSSC meeting, May 14 – 17, 2018

2. What is the context
Support the management, description and exchange of a State’s Maritime Sovereignty, Sovereign rights extents and associated juridical zones.

3. Defining a proposed data model
What is the mandate
S-121 Maritime Limits and Boundaries (MLB) Project team was tasked to:
Defining a proposed data model
Create a product specification to support Law of the Sea Deposits.
Determine if S-100 needs to be extended to support Law of the Sea issues.
This is the actual mandate given to the S-121 project team,
There has been no scope creep. This is not a navigation standard. What has been done was required to address law of the sea deposits with the United Nations Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea (DOALOS).
A data model was developed based on ISO Land Administrative Domain Model (LADM). The only change to S-100 is the extension of the model to use ISO concepts within S-121 only. There was no change to S-100 itself. A new Domain MLB is required for the IHO register.

4. Who are the stakeholders
States:
All levels of governments, HOs, Administration, Legal…
International bodies:
DOALOS, CLCS, ITLOS, ISA, IMO, IHO…
Industry:
Transportation, Security, Fisheries…
Academia:
University, Research Centre…
Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea
International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) ... 
International Seabed Authority 
International Maritime Organization (IMO)
Internatioanl Hydrogrpahic Organisation

5. What are S-121 objectives Focussed
Support MLB legal and geospatial description
Authoritative
Represent States view (structure and formats)
Correct
Support precise and accurate MLBs description
Flexible
Support all user types and their MLBs usages.
Interoperable
IHO S-100, and ISO standards compliant
Usable
Simple, practical, expendable and implementable
Data versioning to support and monitor changes
Version
International Seabed Authority
International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf
Division of Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea
IMO
Linkage to administrative source documents
Referenced

6. When the standard should be used
Based on two levels which follows the basic premise of ISO TC211 of the separation of the “carrier from the content”.
Administer, manage and maintain MLBs
Data Model
Distribute and make MLB accessible
Exchange formats
S121PT1

7. Why do we need a new standard
Different context
MLB legal context needs to be described
All MLB objects
Conceptual objects
Legal context
Parties & Roles
Rights, Restrictions & Responsibilities
Source description
Versioning
New requirements
Findings
Such framework is not available in S-100
International Seabed Authority
International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf
Division of Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea
IMO

8. FINDINGS : Build on existing investment
19152
- LADM Administration
An small addition to the S-100 Universal Hydrographic Data Model
LADM ISO standard models the interaction of legal and spatial frameworks to manage the land space.
Can be tied to S-100 framework to meet MLB requirements

9. Locations
The Feature Objects
Limits
Zones

10. Conceptual Legal Sources
S121PT1

12. The Information Objects
This model starts with the basic Feature objects and geometry from S-100 (green) and is augmented by information objects (as allowed in S-100) from the ISO standard. Rights, restrictions and responsibilities maybe applied to a Basic Administrative Unit (BA Unit). The Party and Group allow entities such as a nation to be associated with these rights, responsibilities and restrictions. The governance object allows legal text to be included.
All objects may be versioned and sourced.
S121PT1

13. Hypothetic typical declaration
Informative
(ISO – LADM)
Parties
(S121_Party)
Country A
(Role: Owner)
Sources
(S121_Source)
Legal Document X
Rights
(S121_Right)
Sovereign
Administrative (S121_BAUnit)
T.S.
(For Zone or Space object only)
Conceptual
(S121_FeatureUnit)
T.S. Area (+vertical domain)
T.S. Outer Limit
Geometries (S121_SpatialAttributeType)
Point
Objects
(S121_FeatureUnit)
Basepoint
Geospatial
(IHO S-100 – Universal Model)
S121PT1

14. The S121 Draft
The proposed S-121 standard takes a practical step towards achieving the vision of S-100 as it was established: to expend the user base and better accommodate the requirements of our digital world.
The proposed S-121 standard is designed to be a simple management (data model) and communication solution (exchange format) that is flexible enough to describe any type of MLBs for the broadest range of users.

15. DEVELOPMENT WORK ACHIEVEMENTS
Data model simple and yet flexible
Integrating S-100 and ISO 19152
Leveraging S-100 object oriented capacities
Inline with IHO vision
Interoperable with land domain
Product specification
Human & Computer readable.
Exchange format meets the need for MLBs deposit to DOALOS
Layer compatible with AML to overlay S-101 charts
GML/KML to support due publicity
Suggesting an S-100 extension solution (ISO 19152) to support the description of Law of the Sea issues.
Three use case:
Layer compatible with AML to overlay S-101 charts and enable maritime enforcement
Human readable textual exchange format
GML/KML to support due publicity

16. Target date for a final specification:
S-121 Progress
The S-121 project team has held several meetings
Two full group teleconference meetings
Face to face meeting New York December 2017
Website is established
Good progress made in producing version 1.0 of the product specification
Now submitted for wider review
Overview
Product Specification
Derivation of Classes
Draft Encoding
Feature Model
Target date for a final specification:
December 2018

17. Other activities
The team have also worked with ISOTC211, the LADM community and the OGC as part of their activities this year.
An OGC pilot has been launched to cover the following activities:
Development of fully interoperable GIS implementations of the emerging S-121 standard
Implement a legal dissemination format that is human readable, in accordance with the S-121 specification and which is suitable for deposit with UN DOALOS.
Development of a GML based exchange format to allow for the overlay of MLBs information over charts including its portrayal.
ISO TC211 will meet from May 28th to June 1st in Copenhagen, Denmark, and will address extensive revision of ISO including IHO input.
Presentation of the OGC pilot project will take place on June 06th in Fort Collins, Colorado
An IHO delegation will be present to initiate the pilot. The result will be tested implementations.

18. Recommended Actions Recommended Actions for HSSC
Note status of standard and distribute to Member States for review.
Establish an MLB domain for S-121-specific content in the IHO register: feature objects and attributes