In 1986 the Royal Netherlands Navy became CARIS' (then known as Universal Systems Limited) first international customer when the Navy's Hydrographic Service purchased CARIS for their nautical paper chart production. Now, 25 years later, CARIS is the preferred solution for hydrographic offices and organizations in the marine industry throughout the world.

In the continuous effort to meet goals for current and future needs, the Royal Netherlands Navy has expanded their use of CARIS software to achieve other goals such as S-57 Electronic Navigational Chart (ENC) production. At present the Royal Netherlands Navy are preparing to implement CARIS' Hydrographic Production Database (HPD) solution, and hosted this year's CARIS HPD User Group Meeting that took place from March 23rd to March 25th in The Hague. The three days of meetings provided opportunities for new and experienced users to share ideas and views while exchanging implementation and operation experiences.

HPD is a suite of products that provides clients with a database solution for the production of S-57 ENCs, S-57 Additional Military Layers (AMLs) and paper charts that meet the International Hydrographic Organization's (IHO) standards. HPD enables users to update product-specific features and customizations while maintaining the source data, providing clients with efficiencies and improved standards of consistency.

Captain Floor de Haan, Head of the Royal Netherlands Navy's Hydrographic Service, who opened this year's CARIS HPD User Group Meeting said: "The Hydrographic Service felt that the long and good relationship with CARIS was a good foundation for hosting this year's HPD User Group Meeting. We were very pleased to see a large number of participating organizations, and also found it exciting to see several new organizations joining this year's meeting"

With participating HPD users from five continents at this year's meeting, CARIS and the Royal Netherlands Navy agreed to use the opportunity to celebrate 25 years of successful cooperation at the office of the Hydrographic Service.

For more information on HPD please visit:
http://www.caris.com/products/hpd/.