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Transport networks - Inland waterways and inland ports





General information

The RRG inland waterway and inland ports layer contains the most important navigable rivers and canals including 463 inland ports. A full list of all inland ports by country available in this dataset can be found here. As a rule, only the navigable sections of the rivers are included in the database.

For central Europe all locks are included, whereas for eastern and southern Europe only some important locks are given (Binnenschiffahrts-Verlag, 1995; 1997). In this version, the inland waterway network contains 4,204 links and 3,745 nodes. In addition to the currently existing waterways the RRG database furthermore includes all future projects of the trans-European transport network (TETN) programme of the European Union as specified in Decision 1692/96/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (European Communities, 1996), further specified in the TEN Implementation Report (European Commission, 1998) and latest revisions of the TEN guidelines provided by the European Commission (1999; 2002a), information on priority projects (European Commission, 1995), latest publications on the priority projects (European Commission, 2002b), as well as all projects of the so-called TINA net-works (TINA = Transport infrastructure needs assessment‘; TINA Secretariat, 1999; 2002) for the new member states and candidate countries.

As being one import link attribute, the waterway class can be used to link additional information on maximal permitted ship dimensions (height, width, length and draught) to the network. The lock dimensions follow the waterway classes as well. This table links the waterway classes to the permitted ship dimensions:

In contrast to the RRG Inland Waterways and Shipping Routes layer, this layer does not include maritime shipping routes, i.e. short sea shipping routes, ferry links and the so-called motorways of the sea are not part of this layer. Consequently, all specific attributes dedicated to characterise shipping routes are excluded from this layer. However, as regards the inland waterways, both the all over WATERWAYS layer and this layer are fully compatible.

The main characteristics of the RRG inland waterway and inland ports layer can be summarised as follows:

Layer name: IWW
Feature classes: Arcs, nodes
No of arc features: 4,204
No of node features: 3,745
User attributes associated with the arcs: 21
User attributes associated with the nodes: 15



Detailed description of the arc attribute table

The following user-defined fields are associated with the arc feature class:

Attribute Width Output Type Dec. Contents
COUNTRY1 4 4 C - ISO country Code
COUNTRY2 6 4 C - ISO country code
LINKTYPE 4 4 I - Link type
1 = Free flowing river
2 = Canalised river
3 = Canal
5 = Port link
LINKCAT 4 4 I - Present link category (see note)
1 = Port link
2 = Waterway class VII
3 = Waterway class VIc
4 = Waterway class VIb
5 = Waterway class VIa
6 = Waterway class Vb
7 = Waterway class Va
8 = Waterway class IV
9 = Waterway class III East of Elbe
10 = Waterway class II East of Elbe
11 = Waterway class I East of Elbe
12 = Waterway class III West of Elbe
13 = Waterway class II West of Elbe
14 = Waterway class I West of Elbe
16 = Planned link
17 = Not navigable rivers
LABEL 30 30 C - Name of the waterway
TENCAT 4 4 I - TEN/TINA category
0 = No link of strategic network
1 = Existing TEN/TINA waterway
2 = Planned TEN/TINA waterway
TENALIGN 4 4 I - TEN/TINA alignment
0 = No TEN/TINA link
1 = TEN/TINA link with precise alignment
2 = TEN/TINA link with unknown precise alignment
CATEGORY 4 4 I - Waterway category
0 = No link of strategic network
1 = TEN waterway link
2 = TINA waterway link, backbone
3 = TINA waterway link, additional
4 = Helsinki corridors
6 = Additional link of strategic network
PRIORITY_EL 4 4 I - TEN priority project number (Essen list)
18 = Danube improvement between Vilshofen and Straubing
PRIORITYEU03 4 4 I - Adjusted TEN priority project number (rev. 2003)
18 = Removal of bottlenecks: Rhine, Main, Danube, incl. improvements between Vilshofen-Straubing
PRIORITY_VM 6 6 C - Priority project code (Van Miert group)
L1P2 =Removal of bottlenecks: Rhine, Main, Danube
L2P4 = Inland waterway connection Seine-Schelde
STRATEGIC 2 2 I - Strategic network
0 = Not included in strategic network
1 = Part of strategic network


COUNTRY1 indicates the ISO code of the country in which the link is located. If a link represents a border river, COUNTRY2 is used to indicate that the link is also part of the waterway network of the neighbouring country.

LINKTYPE, LINKCAT and LABEL give general information on all links. Port links are links representing docks/facilities of a port.

TENCAT, TENALIGN, CATEGORY, PRIORITY_EL, PRIORITY_EU03 and PRIORITY_VM give information on those links which are included in the „Trans European Transport Network Outline Plan, Section Inland Waterways“ and are taken from the „Joint Decision of the European Parliament and of the Council“ published in the Official Journal of the European Communities (L228, 9 September 1996). A planned TEN link in association with unknown alignment (TENCAT=2 and TENALIGN=2) represents a planned inland waterway link to be constructed, whereas a planned TEN link with known alignment (TENCAT=2 and TENALIGN=1) represents improvements on existing waterways (e.g. extension, widening).

STRATEGIC indicates whether or not the link is part of the strategic waterway network. The strategic waterway network contains the trans-European waterway links specified in Decision 1692/96/EC, the TINA networks for the candidate countries as defined by the TINA secretariat and the east European waterway corridors ('Helsinki Corridors') as well as selected additional links in Eastern Europe and further links to guarantee connectivity of regions and centroids. In contrast to the road and rail networks, the inland waterway network does not include access links to/from centroids (and hence does not include any NUTS-2 region centroid), but includes virtual port access links (LINKCAT=1). These functional links represent all port facilities, and can be used for transport modelling purposes. The modelling principle of the port access links is described here.


Detailed description of the node attribute table

The following user-defined fields are associated with the node feature class:

Attribute Width Output Type Dec. Contents
NODEID1 10 10 N 4 Node-ID xxx.yyyy
xxx = Region-ID
yyyy = Node number in region (0001 ….)
COUNTRY1 6 6 C - ISO country code
REGION1 4 4 C - NUTS-2 region code
NODEID2 10 10 N 4 Node-ID xxx.yyyy (see NODEID1)
COUNTRY2 6 6 C - ISO country code
REGION2 4 4 C - NUTS-2 region code
NODETYPE 4 4 I - Node type
1 = Border node
2 = Waterway intersection
3 = River mouth
5 = Lock
6 = Double lock
7 = Ship lift
8 = Safety gate
9 = Changing link attributes
10 = Lock system node
11 = End node
12 = Port access node
13 = Dam without locks
14 = Inland port
15 = Border river node
18 = Fishing harbours, yacht harbours, marina
PORTNUMBER 6 6 I - Port number
LABEL 40 40 C - Port or lock name, node label
LOCKS 6 6 I - Number of locks in line
0 = No lock node
1 … Number of locks in line
CHAMBERS 4 4 I - Lock chambers
0 = No lock node
1 = Lock with one chamber
2 = Double lock
3 = Lock system with several chambers
CATEGORY 4 4 I - Port category
0 = No TEN/TINA port
1 = TEN port
2 = TINA port
3 = Additional port of strategic network
TENCAT 4 4 I - TEN/TINA category
0 = No TEN/TINA (sea)port
1 = Seaport
2 = Sea and inland port
3 = Inland port with facilities for combined transport
4 = Inland port without facilities for combined transport
PRIORITY_EU03 4 4 I - Adjusted TEN priority project number (rev. 2003)
18 = Upgrading for Lanaye lock
PRIORITY_VM 6 6 C - Priority project code (Van Miert group)
L1P2 = Upgrading of Lanaye lock
L3P5 = Limassol port development
L3P6 = Larnaka port development
L3P7 =Valletta and Marsaxlokk port development


NODEID1 is a unique identifier for each node in the network. The first three digits indicate the number of the region in which the node is located. COUNTRY1 indicates the ISO code of the country in which the node is located. REGION1 is a four-character acronym of the name of the region. The main city (not necessarily the greatest city) of each region is the centroid of the region. For each region the nodes are counted from 0001.

Border nodes are nodes at national borders. At each border crossing there is a border node. Border nodes (NODETYPE=1), or a node located along a border river (NODETYPE=15) have two node numbers, country codes and region codes indicating that they belong to two different countries. Regular nodes have no entries in NODEID2, COUNTRY2 and REGION2. With the exception of river mouths (NODETYPE=3), seaports (NODETYPE=4, 17), inland ports (NODETYPE=14) and end nodes (NODETYPE=11) all other nodes might have also entries in NODEID2, COUNTRY2 and REGION2, if they are located along a border river.

LABEL gives general information on selected nodes such as ports or locks. However, this at-tribute is not available for all nodes, but only for a subset of them, mainly serving for location purposes. PORTNUMBER represents a unique port identifier in integer format. In addition to NODEID1, this attribute can be used to link for further information and data to ports. A label is assigned to each port.

Lock nodes represent locks with one chamber, double locks represent locks with two parallel chambers, and lock system nodes represent several locks in line with unknown location and unknown number of chambers per lock. The item LOCKS will then give the number of locks in line. CHAMBERS will give the number of parallel chambers per lock.

CATEGORY, TENCAT, PRIORIOTY_EU03 and PRIORITY_VM give information on those inland ports included in the "Trans European Transport Network Outline Plan, Section Waterways" based on the Joint Decision of the European Parliament and of the Council published in the Official Journal of the European Communities (L228, 9 September 1996) or are part of the TINA network (TINA Secretariat, 1999; 2002). CATEGORY distinguishes between TEN ports (located in the old EU member states) and TINA ports (located in the candidate countries) and those ports added to the strategic modelling network. TENCAT can be used to differentiate between sea and inland ports, and those ports with or without facilities for combined transport.


 More on this topic
Related documents:Waterway classes and permitted ship dimensions
Port access links
ISO Country Codes
Number of inland ports and seaports by country



RRG GIS Database contents:

General information
Transport networks

Available transport datasets
Road network
Railway network
Railway stations in Europe
Inland waterways and shipping routes
Inland ports and seaports
Inland waterways and inland ports
Shipping routes and seaports
Airports of the World
Freight Villages and Transport Terminals
Travel Analysis Districts

Region boundaries, admninistrative boundaries
Geography
Interaction data and regional data
Informationen zur RRG GIS Datenbasis sind nur auf Englisch verfügbar.
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