EPRIS - Evaluation of positioning technologies for the provision of value added services within River Information Services

EPRIS contains testing conventional and future planned positioning technologies in RIS environment to identify a "best practice"-method which is able to fulfil commercial requirements (transport management) as well as nautical and administrative requirements - navigation requirements (traffic management) related to RIS. Focus has been laid on new services (e.g. EGNOS, GALILEO) in order to consider these kinds of services in the migration paths underelaboration for the 2nd generation of River Information Services.

Short Description

Inland waterways as a commonly used transport mode are a main objective of traffic policy in Europe. The provision of River Information Services (RIS) to support traffic and transport management will foster safe, predictable, and efficient transport on the European inland waterway network comparable or even better than rail or road transport. The system concept of RIS is based on an exact positioning of the vessel with frequent updates (every 2 sec.) and the monitoring of relevant vessel data. Traffic management on inland waterways therefore postulates high requirements on accuracy and integrity of positioning services.

Based on this information, different services can be provided whereby the actual traffic situation is displayed on digital navigation charts on board and on shore. The application for navigation purposes requires a position accuracy of 3 meters (95%). Conventional navigation services like NAVSTAR GPS are neither able to deliver such high position accuracy nor the required integrity information as sole means of navigation on a pan-European basis.

Project Partners

Coordinator

via donau Österreichische Wasserstraßen-Gesellschaft mbH

Partners

ACR Electronics Europe G.m.b.H. - Andreas Lesch
TeleConsult Austria GmbH - Bernhard Hofmann-Wellenhof Institut für Navigation und Satellitengeodäsie
TU Graz - Norbert Kühtreiber

Contact Address

via donau - Österreichische Wasserstraßen-Gesellschaft mbH
Donau-City-Straße 1
A-1220 Vienna
Web: www.via-donau.org