Traditionally, the duties of a lookout include maintaining situational awareness and providing warning of the risk of collision, stranding and other dangers to navigation. Therefore, in addition to the use of both eyesight and hearing, the effective use of available instruments and equipment are essential to the purpose of proper lookout; this applies particularly to radar. The aim of this paper is to emphasise the need for the correct practice and method of lookout.

Vector map databases offer the potential for customised cockpit moving-map displays, in which user-specified cartographic features can be layered to meet mission requirements. The disadvantage of vector moving-maps is the potential for increased user workload. In 1995, the Naval Research Laboratory and the Naval Air Weapons Center jointly performed a preference study, during which aircrew viewed demonstrations of prototype moving-map displays and responded to a detailed questionnaire concerning the usefulness of each display. This paper summarises aircrew interviews from that study pertaining to both vector moving-map displays and vector feature overlays, including Height-Above-Threshold (HAT), threat rings, and Clear Line-of-Sight (CLOS).

This paper, and the following 5 papers, were first presented at a Symposium on ‘Advanced Moving-Map Displays’ held on the 3rd and 4th of August 1999 at the US Naval Research Laboratory Detachment at the NASA Stennis Space Centre, Mississippi and are reproduced in modified form with the kind permission of the NRL Commanding Officer, Captain Douglas H. Rau USN.

The role of human factors in map design is to serve as a mediator between the technology availed by electronic digital maps (particularly vector maps) on the one hand, and the many tasks performed by the user on the other. Simply put, no one map is best suited for all tasks. The appropriate mapping of map to task is, in turn, mediated by a series of information processing principles, articulated by the engineering psychologist. The field is on the threshold of being able to provide computational models, based on these principles, that will provide guidance to the map designer as to the circumstances that make one map format better than another for a particular application. This paper describes these principles as applied to two domains of vector map design: the domain of three-dimensional maps, and the domain of database overlay.

This paper examines the frequency distributions of the ranges at which vessels take action to avoid collision. Published data from simulator exercises are employed. Both give-way and stand-on vessels are considered. Lognormal distributions fitted to the data are shown to be superior to those previously published. Underlying ‘causal’ models are developed which are capable of generating the observed distributions.

In his Presidential Address at the 45th Annual General Meeting in October 1991, Norman Dahl gave a thought-provoking discussion of the future of the navigator. He suggested that the navigator's trade is not just a changing trade, but a vanishing one. He proposed then, and subsequently in his 1993 Anderson Memorial Lecture (reproduced as the previous paper in this issue of the Journal), that consideration should be given to the future of navigation, the future of the navigator and the future of the Institute.

In this contribution, papers and addresses over the history of the Institute are examined critically to extract insights into navigation applicable to the present era. These are used to discuss and develop the meanings of the terms ‘navigator’ and ‘navigation’.