Coding of object locations on waterways : case study for Danube river in Croatia and Hhungary

At the beginning of 2004, the International Navigation Association (PIANC) in cooperation with the Central Commission for the Navigation on the Rhine (CCNR) prepared the "Guidelines and Recommendations for RIS, Edition 2". The document was also supported by UNECE (TRANS/SC.3/165). In Annex 2 to this document, "Electronic Reporting in Inland Navigation", there are 17 classifications and code lists that have to be used. They are intended to be used to the highest possible extent in order to minimize interpreting work to be done by the receivers of messages. On the basis of these recommendations, object locations on a waterway could be determined using the following combination of codes: UN country code (ISO 3166-1), UN location code (UN/LOCODE), waterway section code, terminal code or any other construction important for inland navigation and, finally, the fairway section hectometre starting from the mouth of the river. The first two codes are well established worldwide and the corresponding list is maintained according to UN/CEFACT, Recommendation No. 28. Waterway section code is used in the European Inland ECDIS Standard, Section 2, Inland ECDIS Data Standard. Initially, the terminal code contained the short name of a terminal or simply a number. In addition, experts from the Netherlands introduced also codes for terminal types, types of structures on the waterway and location types. Later, numerical codes of the type of structure on the waterway were extended for the Operational Test Platform (OTP) within the Pan-European 5th Framework Project COMPRIS. In 2004, in the framework of the international working group ERI, experts from Austria described how the terminal code could be used also for determination of other structures along waterways. Similar needs for coding the type of structures on the waterway were recognised also by another international working group, NtS. Fairway section hectometre value fits well within the additional 5 character field for waterways navigable within a distance of thousands of kilometres from the river mouth. In this paper, we present our contribution to the development of coding the objects on waterways trying to increase the coding capacity, which may become critical if used all over Europe. In 2006, we initiated a discussion on codes for terminals and structures on the waterway within ERI, NtS and Inland ECDIS expert groups. A number of experts from the Netherlands, Austria, Croatia and Romania were consulted. The final proposal was compiled and the methods proposed are illustrated with examples of objects on the Danube River in Croatia and Hungary.