INLAND SHIPPING
Today, barges transporting containers, tanks or dangerous goods are already obliged to make use of electronic tools for registration. Photo courtesy of Lineage Logistics.
Raising efficiency by electronic reporting Inland shipping vessels that wish to enter North Sea Port are required to register with North Sea Port’s Harbour Master Office. This usually takes place via maritime radio telephone, however electronic reporting will be obligatory as per 4 July for all inland barges that want to enter North Sea Port. PortNews talks about this development with Roy Bogaert, Nautical Functional Application Manager at North Sea Port. “Barges that enter or leave our port need to register with the Harbour Master’s Office”, Mr Bogaert explains. “For this, the maritime radio telephone is used. In general terms, for standard information such as where do you come from, what is your destination, what is your draught, et cetera, this has always been an appropriate tool. Today, more and more administrative information must be shared, which causes a lot of traffic at the radio channels. This can lead to long waiting times for the
barges before they can enter our port area. Apart from this inefficiency, heavy traffic on the channel can cause mistakes that can be dangerous. And with this heavy radio exchange, the channels are less available for serious safety-related communication, which has a direct impact on traffic safety.”
Time consuming and inefficient Mr Bogaert continues, “Today, barges transporting containers, tanks or dangerous goods are already obliged to make use of electronic tools for registration. Take, for example, a barge that transports containers. In the past it was sufficient to just tell via the maritime radio telephone that containers were shipped. Today, however, one has to state exactly with a container matrix what each containers contains. In case of an emergency, the assistance services want to know what risks there are and the exact location of specific risky containers. Reporting this additional information via the radio telephone is not feasible. In our opinion, registering digitally also has a lot of advantages for barges carrying other types of goods, which is why we want to promote electronic reporting for all barges. What also plays a role in this matter is that on a certain route, skippers and inland
54 I PortNews
Electronisch melden.indd 54
07-06-2022 12:09
