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European Unique Hull Identification Number for Inland Navigation

In order to enable efficient management of inland navigation processes development of specialized information systems is needed, through the application of modern information and communication technology (ICT). For this purpose up to now individual European waterway and port authorities developed their own local information systems and databases. As a result of non-conformity of these databases, their integration on European level is confronted with serious problems (COMPRIS, 2003). One of the major problems is the lacking of a common used European unique identification number for inland barges. Due to this in some locally managed databases several different identification numbers are attributed to one and the same inland barge or a certain identification number is unknown. The same problem occurs in the communication between waterway authorities and from waterway to port authorities. Therefore, a unique identification number for all floating objects on European waterway should be introduced. At this moment there are only two official numbers for vessels. The first, IMO number, introduced in 1978, is only in use by maritime vessels. The second, OFS number (Official ship number) is used only for vessels that have a Rhine patent (issued by the CCNR). OFS number cannot be sufficient to cover all requirements related to RIS Directive 2005/44/EC and also to the amendment of Directive 82/714/EEC on technical requirements for inland navigation vessels in the enlarged European Union. The fact is that only 20% of ranges of codes is reserved for non-Rhine countries. A special Electronic Reporting International group (ERI) was appointed to formulate a new system for unique identification of inland vessels and also define a database model for vessel characteristics. The initial suggestion of ERI was to add one character in front of the OFS number in order to increase its coding capacity. The intention was to make least possible differences/modifications with regard to the system currently used under the regime of the Rhine Vessel Inspection Regulations in order to minimise administrative efforts of harmonisation. We as members of ERI group made a proposal for such a new identification number (so called ERN), which was discussed by ERI expert group taking into account input from Joint Working Group of CCNR and EC. In this paper we will describe our proposal to ERI, which was later slightly modified within a special ERI expert group.

CCNR; Electronic Reporting International; ERN number; IMO number; inland navigation; OFS number; River Information Services (RIS); UNECE; unique hull identification number

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