Development and application of an AIS processing toolbox for inland navigation on the Walloon waterway network
Verwilligen, J.; Panahi, S.; Eloot, K.; Mansuy, M.; Swartenbroekx, C.; Bousmar, D. (2025). Development and application of an AIS processing toolbox for inland navigation on the Walloon waterway network, in: SMART RIVERS 2025: Celebrating the World’s Navigable Waterways, 8-12 September 2025: Conference Proceedings. pp. [1-10]
In: (2025). SMART RIVERS 2025: Celebrating the World’s Navigable Waterways, 8-12 September 2025: Conference Proceedings. PIANC USA: Alexandria, VA. different pagination pp., more
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Document type: Conference paper
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| Keywords |
Harbours and waterways > Safety > Risk analysis
Harbours and waterways > Ship motion > Fairway and harbour design
Inland navigation
In-situ measurements
Wallonia [Marine Regions]
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| Author keywords |
River Information Systems (RIS); Traffic assessment; AIS |
| Authors | | Top |
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- Mansuy, M., more
- Swartenbroekx, C.
- Bousmar, D.
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| Abstract |
Minimizing travel time is essential to maintain inland navigation as an attractive mode of transport. As a first step to optimize network operation, waterway managers need to gather relevant shipping traffic data and understand real maneuvers (e.g., ship speeds in bottlenecks, waiting times at locks, crossing areas, …). From this perspective, on behalf of the Walloon waterway authority (SPW: Service Public de Wallonie), Flanders Hydraulics developed a software toolbox (MatlabTM) for processing and analyzing AIS data (Automatic Identification System).
Starting from the AIS-messages received by ten base stations covering the Walloon waterway network, a structured database of unique AIS information is generated. Additionally, statistics related to the operational performance of the individual base stations are evaluated during this first process.
The database covers both ship and trajectory information. By analyzing the trajectory information, based on the frequency of position updates within predefined spatial constraints, the quality of AIS coverage is assessed. This assessment allows a quality factor along all the waterways to be defined and highlights the areas in which the coverage of the AIS-network is suboptimal.
The toolbox then provides various functionalities for visualizing and analyzing the shipping traffic. It allows the generation of animated traffic visualizations and heatmaps, which can be exported in Geographic Information System (GIS) formats or as figures for presentation purposes. One key analysis involves tracking ship passages at predefined passage lines or polygons. The results of these passages can be presented in histograms showing the periodicity of the passages over different return periods. Voyages are defined as the consecutive occurrence of two passages, and these can be displayed in a voyage matrix, offering a two-dimensional overview of traffic flows within the waterway network. Additionally, the number and duration of voyages provide insight into waiting times at locks or they can be related to the discharge volume of the waterway. As such the relation between the accessibility of the waterway and the river flow can be presented. In a next step the voyages can be processed to navigation statistics along the navigation axis of the different waterways. The most important statistics concern the ship speeds as well as the number of ship meetings. The latter can be applied to identify the meeting locations applied by different ship sizes. Another functionality concerns the identification of waiting areas where ships have been static for a predefined time (e.g. 10 hours). |
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