The objective of the Action is to develop the Masterplan Digitalisation of Inland Waterways that will be a joint, uniform and integral digitalisation strategy for IWT under the responsibility of the participating fairway authorities, ready for the execution in the period from 2022 until 2032. The Masterplan will consider the adaptation to the evolution of the policy and it will be based on (inter)national business developments related to the inland waterways traffic and transport domain, as well as on the game-changing technological developments of recent and coming years.

The Masterplan will consider the requirements put on this digital transition related to cybersecurity, standardisation, rules and regulations, security and privacy. A digital information infrastructure requires also more and more attention for the quality of data and information. The Masterplan will focus in this context on procedures and processes for quality management during implementation and operation of the digital waterway infrastructure. It will include a set of implementation scenarios covering technical, organisational, financial and operational consequences each Beneficiary will face in the digitalisation process.

These boundaries of the Masterplan will be related to the required (future) facilitation of internal and external stakeholders, business models in inland waterborne traffic, transport and logistics as well as operational and administrative processes.

It will have a sound basis in the RIS developments and national and European implementation projects, since it will be based on the implementation status of RIS and will build on the results of the recent RIS enabled Corridor Management projects CoRISMa (TEN-T project No 2012-EU-70004-S – RIS Enabled European IWT Corridor Management) and COMEX (CEF Action No 2015-EU-TM-0038-W – River Information Services Corridor Management Execution). It is also expected that it will become a basis for digitalisation of inland waterways transport for other fairway authorities. Involvement of other fairway authorities in the implementation of the Action through the Reference Groups will create awareness of the Masterplan and facilitate the dissemination of results.