EURIS (European River Information Services System) – The Central European RIS Platform

Abstract

The development and implementation of the River Information Services (RIS) concept started in the end 1990s with various research projects followed by national or regional implementation projects in the first decade of this century. The resulting national RIS systems haven’t been able to exploit the full potential of RIS when it comes to cross-border data exchange and interoperability. To overcome these gaps the concept of RIS Corridor Management was established aiming at linking the fragmented services together on a corridor to supply RIS along the complete route or network. The concept of RIS Corridor Management was taken up by the CEF (Connecting Europe Facility Programme) co-funded multi-beneficiary project RIS COMEX (www.riscomex.eu) with the goal to implement harmonized RIS services on European level. Within the RIS COMEX project the consortium of 13 countries realized a common and centralized single access point to Inland Waterway Information, the European River Information Services (EuRIS) System. EuRIS acts as European RIS platform fulfilling a great variety of information needs of inland waterway stakeholders like skippers, vessel and infrastructure operators, logistics and authorities. The system gathers relevant RIS information from the national systems in order to provide optimized fairway-, infrastructure- and traffic-related services in a single point of access for the users enabling reliable route- and voyage planning and sharing as well as traffic- and transport management on pan-European level. EuRIS provides access to its services via a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) or machine-readable Open Application Programming Interfaces (API).

In order to guarantee sustainable operation of EuRIS a legal, organizational and financial framework has been setup by the partners. The core aspects concern the joint governance of the system operation as well as the legal basis for RIS data exchange and usage. The full operation and further development of EuRIS is a major milestone in the sector enhancing attractiveness and competitiveness of Inland Waterway Transport in Europe and setting the basis for connectivity to other transport modes and synchro modal logistic operations.

1 Introduction and Approach

Starting at the beginning of this century, the implementation of River Information Services (RIS) in Europe was focused mainly on national level resulting in a lack of interoperability between the national RIS systems realizing that the services to support transport management are limited and the potential benefits could not be utilized. Therefore, Corridor Management was considered as the next step in the development of RIS.

Within the EU-funded project CoRISMa (Corridor RIS Management) several EU member states defined the concept of “RIS enabled Corridor Management on Inland Waterways in Europe” under the coordination of Rijkswaterstaat (NL) in 2014–2015. RIS Corridor Management aims at linking the existing fragmented services together on a corridor in order to supply RIS not just locally but along the complete network.

In order to overcome the existing grown fragmentation of RIS as setback hindering the development of new services towards synchro modality and competitivity of Inland Waterway Transport, partners from 13 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia) joined their forces within the CEF co-funded multi-beneficiary project RIS COMEX starting in 2016 in order to realize the concept of RIS enabled Corridor Management along the European Inland Waterway Corridors.

In order to provide the specified RIS Corridor Services to the users, the RIS COMEX consortium agreed to realize a common and centralized RIS platform, the EuRIS system. EuRIS, an adapted clone of the existing Flemish VisuRIS system, was advanced to serve as European RIS platform fulfilling a great variety of information needs of inland waterway stakeholders.

2 System Architecture

The EuRIS platform consists of several core components as illustrated in Fig. 1. The central EuRIS environment depicts a virtualized processing hub gathering all required data from the national infrastructures of the 13 EuRIS partners.

The Data Sources provided by the national systems of the 13 EuRIS partners feed all required data into the central system. First, the reference data including the digital waterway network, the RIS Index objects or facility files of objects build the basic layer of the platform. Second, fairway information like Notices to Skippers (fairway-, traffic-, water-, weather-, ice related information), hydrometeo data (water levels, bridge clearance, depth information), Inland ENC or object status information is attached to gain actual data on the fairway and infrastructure. Third, raw AIS¹ data is provided via a secured VPN² connection to enable vessel tracking and sophisticated Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) calculations.

Two main services are provided at the moment to the outside world. On the one hand the EuRIS web portal where all information can be retrieved via a GUI and on the other hand the open APIs where all data can be retrieved via machine readable interfaces.

Fig. 1.

System architecture of EuRIS

Data from the national infrastructure build the basis of the service provision in EuRIS. To cope with the various data categories to be implemented and interfaced, a variety of acceptable interfaces and data formats were defined on the central access point like the widely implemented Notices to Skippers Web Service but also de facto standards already known or tested.

3 Digital Waterway Network

The GIS based digital waterway network is the backbone of EuRIS representing the main interconnected European waterways. To establish such a digital network graph a Reference Network Model was newly specified defining all relevant parameters and data formats for the fairway network and objects. Together with the RIS Index data the information on the fairway objects was further enhanced.

The representation of the colored waterways based on the CEMT³ class categorization in Fig. 2 highlights the exploit of the digital waterway network. All fairway objects like locks, bridges, harbors, terminal, berths or fairway hectometers are represented by a colored RIS Index dot depicted in the detailed picture representation.

Fig. 2.

Representation of the Digital Waterway Network and RIS Index data in EuRIS

4 Services Provided by Euris

By processing all input data, EuRIS provides a variety of information services to all kinds of users like skippers, vessel operators, logistics and authorities as single access point, preventing the users from having to gather all relevant information from many different websites and portals in a cumbersome approach.

The basic information layer comprises the static reference data as well as the dynamic fairway information providing most important information on limitations and blockages of the fairway or infrastructure. In addition, actual data on water levels, bridge clearance or water depth is crucial for any pre-trip planning.

Traffic related services are mainly derived from AIS position data enabling an anonymized traffic image of Europe as illustrated in Fig. 3 and access management by the data owner which is typically the vessel operator. Vessel- and voyage specific information are only available for authorized users, being authorities based on existing laws and regulations as well as skippers and vessel operators for their own vessels.

Additional access permissions can be granted for third parties or logistics users by the vessel operator guaranteeing optimal transport management. A route and voyage planner combine all relevant information providing a voyage description and sophisticated arrival times throughout the European waterway network as a result.

Fig. 3.

Visualisation of annonymised traffic image and berth occupation in EuRIS

5 Framework for Sustainable Operation

Cooperation between Member States is necessary to enable Corridor Management and the operation of EuRIS. In order to formalize and consolidate this cooperation in a sustainable way, a legal, organizational and financial framework has been established. Main goal of this framework was to guarantee on the one hand the legally-sound basis for the operation of the system and the related international exchange of RIS data. On the other hand, the partners had to agree on the organizational setup, the governance and financial aspects of the system operation and further developments. This solid and sustainable cooperation enables the transfer of EuRIS into sustainable operation.

The following frameworks were elaborated and signed:

• European Corridor Management Agreement (EuRIS Cooperation Agreement): Agreement among the EuRIS Parties towards the joint governance and operation of the EuRIS system and related Corridor Services

• Core Arrangement 1: Legal agreement on (GDPR compliant) data provision for Corridor RIS for vessel operators and logistics users concluded between national RIS Authorities/Providers

• Core Arrangement 2: Legal agreement on (GDPR compliant) data exchange between parties of the European Corridor Management Agreement in order to supply RIS enabled corridor management services and to share data with other national authorities/providers for the compliance with legal obligations

Accompanying the above-mentioned agreements and arrangements, specific data processing agreements with relevant contractors as well as data processing impact analysis were elaborated for the sake of data protection in terms of privacy related information.

6 Conclusions

With the joint introduction of the EuRIS system by 13 European countries a big step forward was achieved in providing harmonized River Information Services in Europe. Especially the formerly main drawback of locally provided services and information in a fragmented approach from user’s point of view, is now solved as EuRIS serves as Single Access Point towards relevant fairway-, infrastructure-, traffic- and transport information.

By putting specific agreements and arrangements into force among the participating countries (EuRIS partners) a solid legal, organizational and financial framework was established for the sustainable joint operation and further development of the EuRIS system.

After the official launch of EuRIS by June 2022 the key focus is put on the integration of the users, interconnection of relevant systems and the further development of the provided services and functionality.