Directive 2005/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the CouncilShow full title

ANNEX II PRINCIPLES FOR RIS GUIDELINES AND TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

1. RIS Guidelines

The RIS guidelines referred to in Article 5 shall respect the following principles:

(a)

the indication of technical requirements for the planning, implementing and operational use of services and related systems;

(b)

the RIS architecture and organisation; and

(c)

recommendations for vessels to participate in RIS, for individual services and for the stepwise development of RIS.

2. Inland ECDIS

The technical specifications to be established in accordance with Article 5 for an electronic chart display and information system (inland ECDIS) shall respect the following principles:

(a)

compatibility with the maritime ECDIS in order to facilitate traffic of inland vessels in mixed traffic zones of the estuaries and sea-river traffic;

(b)

the definition of minimum requirements for inland ECDIS equipment as well as the minimum content of electronic navigational charts with a view to the safety of navigation, in particular:

• a high level of reliability and availability of the inland ECDIS equipment used,

• the robustness of the inland ECDIS equipment in order to withstand the environmental conditions typically prevailing on board a vessel without any degradation in quality or reliability,

• the inclusion in the electronic navigational chart of all kinds of geographical objects (e.g. boundaries of the fairway, shoreline constructions, beacons) that are needed for safe navigation,

• the monitoring of the electronic chart with overlaid radar image when used for conning the vessel;

(c)

the integration of depth information on the fairway in the electronic navigational chart and display to a predefined or the actual water level;

(d)

the integration of additional information (e.g. of other parties than the competent authorities) in the electronic navigational chart and display in the inland ECDIS without affecting the information that is needed for safe navigation;

(e)

the availability of electronic navigational charts to RIS users;

(f)

the availability of the data for electronic navigational charts to all manufacturers of applications, when appropriate against a reasonable cost-related charge.

3. Electronic ship reporting

The technical specifications for electronic ship reporting in inland navigation in accordance with Article 5 shall respect the following principles:

(a)

the facilitation of the electronic data exchange between the competent authorities of the Member States, between participants in inland as well as maritime navigation and in multi-modal transport where inland navigation is involved;

(b)

the use of a standardised transport notification message for ship-to-authority, authority-to-ship and authority-to-authority messaging in order to obtain compatibility with maritime navigation;

(c)

the use of internationally accepted code lists and classifications, possibly complemented for additional inland navigation needs;

(d)

the use of a unique European vessel identification number.

4. Notices to skippers

The technical specifications for notices to skippers in accordance with Article 5, in particular regarding fairway information, traffic information and management as well as voyage planning, shall respect the following principles:

(a)

a standardised data structure using predefined text modules and encoded to a high extent in order to enable automatic translation of the most important content into other languages and to facilitate the integration of notices to skippers into voyage planning systems;

(b)

the compatibility of the standardised data structure with the data structure of inland ECDIS to facilitate integration of notices to skippers in inland ECDIS.

5. Vessel tracking and tracing systems

The technical specifications for vessel tracking and tracing systems in accordance with Article 5 shall respect the following principles:

(a)

the definition of the requirements concerning systems and of standard messages as well as procedures so that they can be provided in an automated way;

(b)

the differentiation between systems suited to requirements of tactical traffic information and systems suited to requirements of strategic traffic information, both with regard to positioning accuracy and required update rate;

(c)

the description of the relevant technical systems for vessel tracking and tracing such as Inland AIS (inland automatic identification system);

(d)

compatibility of data formats with the maritime AIS system.