Rivers Run Through It
Written by Jamal B. Beck
GIF 2011 Volume 9: Issue: 8 (November/December)
The U.S. inland waterway navigation system consists of 8,200 miles of rivers maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in 22 states. This highly adaptable and effective system of barge navigation annually moves more than 625 million tons of commodities, including coal and petroleum products, various other raw materials and manufactured goods.
The successful navigation and maintenance of these vast natural highways by river pilots, the tug and barge industry, recreational boaters, dredgers, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and other groups and agencies is critical to inter- and intrastate commerce—to the tune of $73 billion annually.
Depth changes, underwater obstructions, weather and other natural, rapidly changing conditions can cause costly delays, however, in the safe and efficient delivery of goods and services.
The Army Geospatial Center’s (AGC) inland electronic navigational charts (IENCs) were developed by USACE to improve maritime awareness by providing accurate and real-time displays of vessel positions relative to waterway features, improved voyage planning and monitoring, new personnel training tools, and an integrated display of river charts, radar and automatic identification system (AIS) overlays to the entire inland navigation community. The charts are used by USACE, the dredging industry, environmental planners, recreational boaters, hydraulic engineers, transportation specialists and others requiring detailed navigation.
The IENC program was initiated after a catastrophic railroad disaster in 1993. The pilot of a towboat pushing barges in dense nighttime fog on the Big Bayou Canot in Alabama became disoriented. The barge collided with a railroad bridge pier, causing the rails to become misaligned. An Amtrak train derailed on the bridge shortly afterwards, resulting in 47 people killed and 103 injured. As a result, Congress mandated that electronic charts be developed for all inland navigable rivers by USACE, the agency responsible for inland rivers. The development of IENCs to cover the Mississippi River and tributaries began with pilot projects on the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana and Lower Mississippi River near Vicksburg, Miss. These projects were the first USACE efforts to collect and convert inland waterway data commonly used for river and channel maintenance into electronic navigation charts.
More than 5,700 miles of navigable rivers have been electronically charted to date. IENCs for the following rivers are available for download at no charge and unlimited use from USACE’s E-Charting website, www.agc.army.mil/echarts. These data sets encompass the Allegheny, Arkansas, Atachafalaya, Black Warrior-Tombigbee, Cumberland, Green, Illinois, Kanawha, Kaskaskia, Lower Mississippi, Missouri, Monongahela, Ohio, Ouachita, Red, Tennessee, Tennessee- Tombigbee and Upper Mississippi rivers. IENCs for the Alabama and White rivers are currently under development, with completion scheduled for this fiscal year.
Further IENC developments include monthly USCG local notice to mariners updates, new geographic features, international harmonization features, more accurate waterway surveys and supplemental chart data layers depicting specific river information. The charts are available in three formats: the international data exchange format, known as S-57, as well as shapefiles and keyhole markup language (KML) files.
The S-57 format is primarily used by industry in electronic chart systems (ECS) onboard their vessels. The ECS is a sophisticated navigational display unit used by all commercial vessels. IENC S-57 data is available to the general public and has a variety of users, ranging from hydrographic agencies, government entities and private industry to the recreational boater.
A shapefile is a geospatial vector data format used by the GIS community for creating maps and charts easily and efficiently. KML is a format used to display 3-D geographic data in a browser such as Google Earth or Google Maps. Charts are updated frequently, and quality assurance measures are conducted before data is posted to ensure that the latest chart and aids to navigation data are available to users.
High-Accuracy GPS
Positioning of all features and inland chart data is achieved through the use of high-accuracy GPS, including shoreline structures, navigational aids and bridge piers. They are surveyed using differential GPS or real-time kinematic satellite navigation.
Hydrographic data, collected through the same GPS equipment, incorporates river depths and any underwater obstructions. River depths are converted to contours that depict navigable channels on the rivers, representing one of the most important features of an IENC—aerial imagery is also collected and integrated into the charts. This data is transformed into areas for safe navigation and added to each IENC. The mariner navigates rivers by using the charts in the ECS, coupled with GPS—similar to using an automobile GPS unit.
“The AGC is developing new means of delivering IENC data to the public,” said Dr. Bob Mann, IENC program manager. “An XML catalog was written for public use to facilitate chart downloading, and a new RSS feed is available for all three formats to allow the user to automatically receive updates without requiring them to access the website. New Web mapping services are being planned so that users can simply click on an area of the IENC and download the data quickly. Mobile applications are also being developed for use on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.”
The AGC also partnered with the USCG to arrange accurate buoy placement using GPS and proprietary software.
AGC and USACE are working with their strategic partners and other stakeholders to provide water resource data to the public via the IENC program. Development is underway for AIS programs to transmit lock and dam navigation information to mariners on inland rivers. Cooperation with USACE’s Institute for Water Resources to share information from the master locks database and port series information will ensure that these charts remain current with known features and facilities.
Marine information objects are also being created to supply additional information to traditional IENC charts. The main purpose of this initiative is to convey relevant information in an S-57 environment, such as the display of additional emergency management information or a layer that could include the location of hazardous materials along inland rivers. The program also has the potential to utilize existing IENC GIS data for information analysis to ascertain best sailing routes for the towing industry. A prototype would combine outside information such as current velocities, obstructions, river flow volume and weather with existing data to determine the best route for river cargo, saving time and conserving resources such as fuel and labor.
The USACE is also working with commercial partners to develop a production system that will allow for the creation of electronic navigational charts and paper chart books from the same data source. IENCs are being produced and maintained primarily through a contractor.
“Once the new system is developed and implemented, the majority of all chart production and modification will transition from the contractor to individual USACE districts, placing more responsibility on them to produce and maintain their charts,” said Mann. “This initiative will reduce production time, increase workflow efficiencies and lower data development costs as a result of operating from within a robust enterprise system.” ♦
Jamal Beck is the public affairs officer for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Army Geospatial Center.
