Navigational information is of great significance to the safety of maritime navigation. To better guarantee navigator safety and improve navigation efficiency, an applied model of geographic information services (GI services) that consists of an operational architecture, several subsystems and multiple GI services is presented. This work is an e-navigation testbed that follows e-navigation technical architecture and integrates a large amount of navigation-related resources. Real-time, location-based and on-demand digital navigational information can be exchanged and applied in a standardised way. An experiment conducted in the Pearl River Estuary area of the South China Sea showed that application of GI services in e-navigation can supplement the existing methods of exchanging navigational information and better assist navigators in decision making. Furthermore, the proposed model is adaptable and could be easily applied in other areas.
