European programme: TEN-T
Project start/end/duration: 01/2006 till 12/2008
Project website: www.iris-europe.net
Project co-ordinator (contact data): via donau, Mario Sattler, +43 (0) 664 80842 1613, mario.sattler@via-donau.org
Content and results
IRIS Europe was set up as a Europe-wide project in order to expand the functionality of River Information Services on the European waterway network. The project addressed the elimination of existing bottlenecks and defined additional functionality in the field of River Information Services (RIS) in the Danube and Rhine-Seine region. The project focused especially on cross-border information services and the related data exchange and procedures. Newly developed RIS Services such as traffic and transport information exchange, hull data exchange and calamity abatement service were validated by means of pilot installations, which are interconnected among each other. Regular exchanges with the RIS Experts Groups (www.risexpertgroups.org) did support this project process.In order to provide already defined but also new River Information Services, it was necessary to implement the appropriate intelligent infrastructure. Therefore a main focus of IRIS Europe was the specification, implementation and testing of pilot infrastructure for River Information Services:
- AIS infrastructure – Along the Slovakian stretch of the Danube Inland AIS base stations were installed, which forward traffic information received from Inland AIS transponders onboard the vessels, to the national RIS Centre.
- Electronic Reporting service infrastructure – In Austria, Slovakia, Hungary and France, a national infrastructure was specified and implemented allowing to report cargo and voyage data electronically from skippers and fleet operators to relevant authorities.
- Hull database service infrastructure – In Austria, Slovakia, Hungary and the Netherlands the infrastructure for management (creation, maintenance, availability) of hull data was specified and implemented. The national databases will be connected to the European Hull database in a later step (not part of IRIS Europe) for the exchange of the Minimum Hull Data Set defined by directive 2008/87/EC.
- Infrastructure for international exchange of RIS data – Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and the Netherlands were elaborating detailed specifications for an appropriate decentralised infrastructure for the international exchange of position information (AIS data in a first step), cargo and voyage information (ERI data) and hull data between RIS centres and for the provision of information to entitled users.
