Application of GIS and Web Technologies for Danube Waterway Data Management in Croatia

Abstract

The paper gives a general description of the Danube waterway data management in Croatia. For this purpose, we initiated the development of a specialized geographic information system (GIS), the so called River IS, which provides efficient waterway related data management for the Croatian part of the Danube River. In addition, Croatian activities in the Pan-European Programme Consortium Operational Management Platform River Information Services (COMPRIS) and INTERREG project Data Warehouse for the Danube Waterway (D4D) are described. Greatest emphasis is placed on our research how to solve the major problems identified by “GIS Forum Danube” expert groups. We present our solutions to two important D4D project objectives. The first project objective concerns preparation of national GIS data of the participating countries in the world geodetic WGS84 coordinates as well as checking the transnational compatibility of GIS data. The second important project objective concerns development of a commonly agreed catalogue of object types and their attributes necessary to describe waterway related data. For example, the conversion of the Croatian national geographic data into Inland ECDIS digital navigation maps is described.