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Full implementation of River Information Services on the Sava River Waterway
Start date: Sep 30, 2012, End date: Jan 30, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The Sava River waterway, being the longest waterway in Croatia is presently severely underused, river transport being limited to scarce traffic on small river sections of the waterway. The Sava River is navigable over a stretch of 594 km (starting from the confluence with the Danube, according to the brand new river chainage) and links the economies of the four Sava riparian states of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. Based on the existing and/or planned construction of the traffic infrastructure the Sava River waterway with several ports of the Adriatic, the available port infrastructure along the Sava River and the connection with the Danube waterway, the Sava River provides a sound basis for further development of inland navigation transport, the elementary transport mode of the future, which is as such, strongly supported by the EU transport policy.Despite its natural and geographic advantages, over the last 20 years, the Sava River waterway system has been neglected and its current state-of-condition is poor due to many external, but also internal factors. Due to the homeland war in the Sava basin territory, traffic was completely halted at the period, whereas the maintenance of the Sava River waterway system was not carried out. Damaged infrastructure and the presence of unexploded ordnance do not merely pose a constant threat to navigation, but to the environment as well.In addition to the maintenance work done by the Croatian Agency for Inland Waterways over the course of the last three years, no significant infrastructural investments were made, neither to improve the navigation safety nor to increase the competitiveness of inland navigation transport on the Sava waterway. The current state of waterway basically starts the chain reaction as such; poor infrastructure conditions cause low levels of navigation safety, which inevitably hinder any inland waterway transport development on the waterway.The most reliable solution is the implementation of the latest information and communication technologies, River Information Services, which are necessary for several reasons. First and foremost, safety. River Information Services (RIS) will drastically improve safety of inland waterway navigation by utilization of the AIS (automatic identification system) and VHF networks in order to enable vessel tracking and tracing, vessel-vessel and vessel-shore communication, both data and voice communication, the ability to “see another vessel behind the bend” etc.In addition to the safety element, RIS are a standard proscribed by the EU transport policy and as such, represent a prerequisite of national transport policies of all EU candidate and member states.Objectives: The objective of the project is to improve the safety and efficiency of inland waterway transport on the Sava river which encompasses all the main specific objects of the operation: To enhance the traffic safety by monitoring and anaging the traffic on the Sava river waterway, to optimize the utilization of the Sava river, to establish manageability of the traffic on the Sava river by providing the possibility of giving navigational/directional aids to the traffic, to enable the authorities to manage and plan the traffic operation and strategy, to improve the exchange of information for facilitating cross-border operations and support authorities in law enforcement, to enable quick and timely response in the event of an accident or incident which involves hazardous cargo, to enable the authorities to distribute the information to other operators and organizations to integrate the information in logistic chains and enable seamless transport operations and to reduce environmental hazard and polluting emissions and spills due to accidents, illegal actions and/or normal operation.
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