On November 16, 2018, NOAA released ASSIST, a new system for submitting questions and reporting nautical chart errors to NOAA's Office of Coast Survey. ASSIST has a mobile-friendly design and improved user interface that allows customers to access the system conveniently from any device.
This new tool replaces Coast Survey's Inquiry and Discrepancy Management System (IDMS), a non-spatial system used to collect comments, inquiries, and discrepancy reports since 2008.
ASSIST is a spatially enabled inquiry and discrepancy management system. It uses a Web AppBuilder front end to allow users to visualize NOAA raster and vector charts and tag issues with comments using a web form.
It uses ArcGIS for Maritime Server services for visualizing the latest ENC data. ASSIST also uses ArcGIS Workflow Manager on the back-end to create and manage jobs for items that are submitted. ArcGIS Workflow Manager tracks the life cycle of the item from submission to closure.
These improvements streamline the internal Coast Survey workflow, allowing faster, more efficient responses to customers.