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ACTIVITIES :: eTen :: Projects :: Projects of the Month :: Eureauweb

August 2007 Project of the Month: Eureauweb

European Waterways Tourism Development Service

Issues being addressed

Eureauweb is a collection of services based on the use of advanced mobile technologies to support and enhance the lives of those connected with European waterways; from holiday-makers who use or intend to use the waterways in their leisure time, to business people whose businesses impact on and are impacted by our waterways.

To meet the needs of this multi-social dimension, eureauweb offers European waterways enterprises and waterway users services that provide up-to-date, location specific, real time waterways information and boat location monitoring; services that are currently not available on Europe’s inland waterways.

Eureauweb equips waterway visitors with all the information they need to make the most of their holiday; it provides boat hire operators with real-time information about fleet location and boat status and it helps promote local businesses to people visiting and using the waterways. It also aims to help rejuvenate Europe’s inland waterways, a major part of our culture and heritage and what was once the whole basis for life and trade in Europe.

Objectives of the project

The overall goal of Eureauweb is to test and validate the market feasibility of the operational services for providing location specific waterways information using advanced mobile communications on a wide-scale basis in different contexts and countries prior to initial deployment on a trans-European scale.

The objective is to validate all services by:

• Installing the complete system components in two hire boat fleets belonging to companies in two European markets - TwinRoss (Shannon Castle Line) in Ireland and Alvechurch Boat Centres, UK.
• trialling production of electronic location-based information services by adapting existing paper based solutions – this is being supported by the world’s leading cartographic publisher Harper Collins.
• trialling aspects of the eureauweb services aimed at improving waterways accessibility with the help of specialist organisations in the field.

Services

Eureauweb comprise three main services:

• Tourist Information Service: provides up-to-date information for tourist users of the waterways based on their location and profile. This information is far more extensive than that provided by current mobile information products and may be updated and controlled by the individual service and content providers.
• Boat Management Service: A fleet management application for boat hire operators allowing them to locate any boat in their fleet, monitor the engine status and far more rapidly respond to breakdown callouts.
• Accessibility Information Service: provides detailed information relating to the accessibility of points of interest in the waterway environment. This service also aims to encourage service providers to give far better accessibility information than currently available.

In addition, the Portal Service (project web site) provides information on the eureauweb services, registration for information users and data input and entry management for service providers.

These are very much premium services: they have been very carefully designed to meet the actual needs of the various actors involved, and have been implemented and extensively tested to ensure that they provide a rich waterways experience to the users.

Achievements & Benefits

The basic eureauweb services have been customized for use with hire operators and waterway tourists in UK, Ireland and France. Workshops and demonstrations in Ireland and UK have resulted in very positive feedback from target groups and interest organizations including waterway authorities and national waterway associations. So far the project has already installed the service in three pilot sites for trials and validation and Alvechurch Boat Centres, the largest UK operator, is now expected to install eureauweb in the boats of their headquarters fleet.

Interest in France has been shown for potential installation of the Tourist Information and Boat Management Services in hire operator fleets and for a eureauweb based information system based in a selection of inland harbours.

The main benefits will be:

• That Boat hire operators will be able to make more efficient management of their fleets because of a far more efficient recovery service for breakdowns as well as better service/maintenance information about individual boats.
• Service Providers and boat hire operators will benefit from the journey statistics provided by the Boat Management Service – user behaviour patterns including the most common stops/stayovers are readily identified providing valuable marketing information and the ability to reach new customers.
• Holiday makers who hire boats will have enriched vacation information and a common platform for waterway information for the major leisure waterways of UK, Ireland and France with other areas under development. In the UK particularly a eureauweb service based on the highly successful series from Harper Collins ‘Nicholson Guide to the Waterways’ is anticipated.
• Finally, encouraging service providers and individuals to use the accessibility information service to provide better and more extensive information for the disabled visitor to the waterways.

Most important, socially, eureauweb helps develop community awareness among those involved with Europe’s waterways.

Expected benefits by the end of the project

By the end of the project paysafecard should be established as a means of payment throughout Europe.

Partners

The following organisations are partners in the eureauweb Consortium:

• Human Factors Research Group University College Cork (HFRG) – Ireland (co-ordinator): usability evaluation and design group.
• Euromapping S.a.r.l (Euromapping) – France (partner): cartographer and waterway consultants.
• GeoConcept SA (GC) - France (partner): application provider for GIS interface.
• EasyTech SL (EasyTech) – Spain (partner): application provider for fleet management service.
• TwinRoss Holdings (Shannon-Castle) – Ireland (partner): interest organisation for the use of eureauweb services in the Irish boat hire sector.
• Alvechurch Boat Centres (Alvechurch) – UK (partner): interest organisation for the use of eureauweb services in the UK boat hire sector.
• Harper Collins Publishers Ltd. (Nicholson) – UK (partner): cartographer and publisher of maps and guides including waterway guides.
• National Community Boats Association (NCBA) – UK (partner): interest organisation for use of eureauweb services by disabled community.

Reference Data