Waypoint Navigation for Rivercraft?

Abstract

Anticipating that transport on the West European inland waterways will increase in volume, in ship size and in speed, experiments are being carried out to investigate whether safety of navigation – including traffic management – can be improved by the employment of GPS or DGPS, electronic navigation charts, river radar and computer technology. Although waypoint navigation and collision avoidance systems are generally accepted in the maritime world, these methods could cause problems when applied on inland waterways.