Market-oriented Information Systems in Inland Barging

摘要

In recent years inland navigation in Europe attracted a great deal of interest from the public and private sector, as well as from the public opinion. In order to improve the competitiveness of European inland navigation transport numerous research projects (TNDRIS, STIS, BICS, IBIS, FBTS, Via Donau, etc.) have been or are being carried out Given the development of logistics concepts - like just-in-time -ICT has become a competitive tool to the inland barge industry. The modal choice often depends on the presence of an efficient and well-designed ICT system. If inland navigation would like to be involved in the modal choice, a state-of-the-art ICT system or River Information Services (RIS) is required. This paper describes the requirements of such an ICT system to integrate inland navigation in multimode logistics chains. The paper relies on the expertise the authors gained in the research project Flanders Barge Traffic System (FBTS), as members of Work Package 5-Value Added Services from RIS for Transport Information-in the EU project COMPRIS and resulting from various contacts with industry representatives.