MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT, PUBLIC WORKS AND WATER MANAGEMENT

Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, Zeeland (the Netherlands)

The Scheldt estuary forms the seawards entrance to the port of Antwerp. The waterways in the estuary are maintained by Rijkswaterstaat (Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management).
One of their prime responsibilities is the provision of accurate and highly up-to-date depth information. This information is used by pilots to guide large vessels safely and timely into Antwerp. Pilots in the Scheldt estuary are equipped with portable electronic chart systems that use navigation charts (ENCs) based on the S-57 standard from the International Hydrographic Organisation.

Use of official ENCs is mandated by the International Maritime Organisation. Driven by the need of having highly accurate and extremely up-to date ENC’s RWS choose ATLIS to the built a solution database driven solution to met these needs. The project, by RWS known as the The Database Scheldes project, was the first implementation of the SENS solution.

SENS is an advanced Oracle Spatial database driven system for the management of bathymetric data and production of ENCs in a short time frame necessary to meet the demands set by the pilots. Rijkswaterstaat has chosen the solution as no other system available world-wide to date could meet these demands.

In Q4 2004 Database Scheldes became operational. Since then the technical turn around time from survey’s to finished ENC’s is a matter of hours.