1. Historical Background
PIANC recognized already in 1999 the importance of the development of River Information Services (RIS) and installed a working group on this topic with the task to develop the first edition of the Guidelines for River Information Services. These first RIS Guidelines were published in 2002. The PIANC RIS Guidelines were an important corner stone of the Directive on River Information Services of the European Commission that came into force in 2005.
Since the publication of the RIS Guidelines versions 2002 and 2004, further developments on services and standards as well as the technical and practical experience have taken place. PIANC established in 2010 the Permanent Working Group 125 with the task to keep the Guidelines for River Information Services up to date. As a first result of this Permanent Working Group, PIANC published in 2011 an update of the RIS guidelines after having analysed the world wide status of the implementation of River Information Services.
The PIANC RIS guidelines 2011 were formally accepted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and all European River Commissions.
Since the last technical report of PIANC on RIS the development in the implementation of River Information Services has been considerably. The PIANC working group is preparing the next generation of RIS guidelines that will be published by PIANC in 2018
In the PIANC “Technical Report on the Implementation Status of River Information Services status 2010” of Working Group 125, it was stated that the development and use of RIS services in a logistics environment was still in his infancy. Since this report the following developments were recognised as relevant reasons for the update of the RIS guidelines. These developments are:
- RIS enabled corridor management
- The Maritime e-Navigation development
- The need for globalisation of the RIS guidelines
2. RIS enabled Corridor Management
Since 2010 studies have been conducted on RIS enabled Corridor Management. The concept of Corridor Management is recognised as the next step in the deployment of RIS services in Europe.
“Corridor Management is defined as information services among waterway authorities mutually and with waterway users and related logistic partners with the goal to optimise use of inland navigation corridors within a network of waterways”
Corridor Management requires sharing of information between authorities and the cooperation of public and private partners is necessary to improve both the performance of inland navigation and the use of the existing infrastructure.
Besides the necessary technical and procedural harmonisation, the basic principle of Corridor Management is the mutual agreement between the fairway authorities in a specific transport corridor on the services and functions they are planning to provide in that corridor.
Three distinctive levels of Corridor Management have been defined:
- Level 1: Corridor Management at this level provides a set of services to enable reliable route planning by supplying – dynamic and static – infrastructural information.
- Level 2: Corridor Management at this level provides a set of services to enable reliable travelling times for voyage planning and for traffic management, by providing traffic information:
- Level 2a: considering the actual use of the waterway network (e.g. actual waiting times)
- Level 2b: considering predictions during a voyage (e.g. predicted waiting times on the corridor) where considered reasonable
- Level 3: Corridor Management at this level provides a set of services to support transport management of the logistic partners.
Enhancing inland navigation with the concept of RIS enabled Corridor Management will lead to benefits for inland waterborne transport in the logistic chain e.g.:
- Reliable voyage planning to improve the operation of skippers, terminal and port operators;
- Improved added value of Vessel Traffic Management Services in the logistic chain;
- Simplification of the administration procedures by the usage of an intelligent information management.
The PIANC RIS guidelines are essential for the further development and implementation of RIS enabled Corridor Management being an essential corner stone towards smart multimodal transport management solutions.
3. RIS in the intermodal transport domain
The PIANC Working Group 125 on RIS analysed the above-mentioned developments but also took up the lessons that can be learned from information technologies and services in other transport domains, like there are e-Navigation in the maritime world and Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) in the road sector.
In the RIS Guidelines 2018 special attention is given to the relation between RIS and the maritime concept of e-Navigation and the benefits of these developments for inland navigation.
The PIANC working group 156 on the relation between RIS and e-Navigation published their final report in 2017. As the harmonization between the inland and maritime world is very important, several recommendations of this working group will be of importance for the RIS guidelines 2018.
It is expected that RIS Flagship projects will take into consideration the developments in e-Navigation in order to pave the way for a coordinated implementation of RIS and e-Navigation in Inland Waterways.
4. Globalisation of the RIS guidelines
The concept of River Information Services has originated from Europe, and so does the principle of RIS enabled Corridor Management. It was soon recognized that RIS can also bring benefits to waterway users on other continents, thus waterway authorities around the world started with the implementation of RIS in their domain. In the framework of PIANC there has always been a good cooperation between Europe and the USA on the development of RIS towards a worldwide concept.
It became obvious that the RIS Guidelines need to become a tool suitable for guiding the worldwide implementation of RIS, and taking due consideration of developments in other transport domains. For this reason the new RIS Guidelines 2018 are currently transformed into guidelines for stakeholders in the inland waterborne transport domain all over the world.