The European Union has decided to implement RIVER INFORMATION SERVICES (RIS) on many of the inland waterways in Europe. A directive has been issued in which the specifications of RIS are presented. RIS is a concept for harmonised information services, meant to improve safety and efficiency of inland waterways transport.

According to the RIS directive, voyage planning data of all waterways of CEMT class IV and higher must be made available to the waterway infrastructure users. Waterways of class Va and higher must also be charted with standardised Electronic Navigation Charts (ENC's) according to the Inland ECDIS Standard.

NoorderSoft maintains all necessary data (not only of class IV and V waterways, but of ALL inland waterways) for voyage planning, including distance tables, structure dimensions, position information and operation hours. NoorderSoft maintains these data on a daily basis by means of an intelligent data kernel that allows a perfect match of all types of source data. With this kernel data from distance tables can be checked against geographical data and vice versa.

NoorderSoft can advise administrations and waterway authorities regarding the best, easiest and cheapest way to implement the requirements of River Information Services in their data collections.