INDRIS, an Inland AIS Application on the European Waterways

The transport sector and in particular inland waterway transport, is increasing the use of information and communication technology (ICT).The use of ICT can improve this mode of transport eg efficiency and the competition with road transport. An ICT concept, called RIS, River Information Services, is developed during the last years for the exchange of information with inland vessels for a number of applications. To bring this concept alive, a research project, INDRIS (Inland Navigation Demonstrator for River lnformation Services), was defined to establish standards for the information flows in terms of data elements, protocols and communication means as well as to demonstrate the principles of the concept. INDRIS is carried out by governmental bodies, transport industry, shipping industry and research institutes in The Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Belgium and France. The RIS concept covers navigation, safety and logistìc applications. For this reason it was necessary to define data communication and communication systems for time critical applications (real time), such as navigation and safety related data exchange, and not time critical applications eg reporting, gathering fairway information, weather reports and planning. For time critical data communication the Automatic Identification System, AIS, is chosen. This paper describes Inland AIS as demonstrated in INDRIS