The Austrian Danube River Information Services - DoRIS have been operational since 2006 (www.doris.bmvit.gv.at). The infrastructure and the deployed technologies (operating system, data management, central servers, landside base stations, etc.) for one of the main functions of DoRIS, the support of traffic information on the basis of the Inland-AIS standards, are accordingly outdated. In order to continuously ensure the reliable and future-proof operation of these functions, viadonau is steadily working on the gradual renewal of relevant system elements.
News and project status
In the first half of 2017, the bandwidths of the 23 DoRIS base stations along the Danube were increased and the central firewall was replaced by a new, state-of-the-art, redundant firewall, in order to comply with the increased current and future data transfer requirements.
For the renewal of the central DoRIS AIS infrastructure, a specification was prepared in spring 2018, on the basis of which a Europe-wide two-stage tender was carried out. In November 2018, the best bidder was commissioned with the implementation of the renewal of central DoRIS components. In the course of the renewal, proven functions were retained and improved on the one hand, and new functions, such as the transmission of bridge clearances or buoy positions via AIS, were implemented on the other. Furthermore, services developed within the framework of the RIS Corridor Management (RIS COMEX) and also the interfaces to central European systems can be easily integrated into the new system. Due to the commissioning of additional desired functions, the planned conversion of the systems was delayed by several months.
Until the final changeover to the new system, both systems were run in parallel in order to be able to continue to guarantee all services. In mid-November 2020, parallel operation on the Austrian Danube locks was terminated and the old DoRIS system was decommissioned. Traffic management activities are now carried out on the locks with the help of the new system and also on new hardware. The changeover was smooth and seamless.
In order to be able to operate the new system in a future-proof manner on the hardware side, a concept for the renewal of the virtual DoRIS infrastructure was drawn up and agreed in 2020. The renewal of the servers is to be carried out in the first half of 2021. This should ensure that the DoRIS system remains reliable and highly available.
The activity makes a substantial contribution to the implementation of measure
09. Develop River Information Services further of the Action Programme for the Danube 2022.
