Carriage, Handling and Storage of Dangerous Goods along

108 RECOMMENDATIONS
4.3.2 Minimum Safety Requirements for Navigation and Communication
Equipment
RECOMMENDATION
Minimum safety requirements for navigation and communication equipment should be established
for tankers transporting dangerous goods in the Mekong River system to improve waterway safety.
CHALLENGE
It was found that vessels operating in the Upper and Lower Mekong have limited navigation and
communication equipment. It is important for operations that ports authorities and terminal operators
know the location of vessels for planning of operations. Navigation equipment can be essential
in preventing collisions and groundings. Further information is on the minimum requirements of
navigation and communication equipment for vessels specified in Chapter 3.
4.3.3 Evaluate Current Aids to Navigation
RECOMMENDATION
Evaluate the current aids to navigation system and determine locations where further installation
of buoys and beacons are required including Visual Low Water-Alert Gauges which should be
installed at navigation bottlenecks to provide guidance to the skippers.
CHALLENGE
A study is required to do inventories on all existing aids to navigation, such as buoys and beacons,
shore marks and other simple navigational aid assistance, and identify what is required for further
installation. In 2009–2010, the Navigation Programme undertook brief condition surveys in the Lower
Mekong from Kompong Cham to Phnom Penh, from the Cambodia-Viet Nam border through the Vam
Nao Pass to Can Tho Port for improving navigation and from Vam Nao Pass to the sea. The condition
surveys included topo-hydrographic surveys, navigation channel designs and designs for aids to
navigation and electronic navigation charts. Aids to Navigation (day and night) system were installed in
some stretches but not enough. Along the Upper Mekong River, aids to navigation (day) have also been
installed from Huay Xay to Luang Prabang to Vientiane.
The aids to navigation system requires further improvement. A review is needed on the effectiveness
of the existing aids to navigation system to determine areas where more buoys and beacons are needed.
The review should consider the further implementation of modern technologies to improve waterway
safety such as GPS and Automatic Identification Systems (AIS). These items are explained further and in
the Chapter on Vessels in Volume I. In the first instance, these technologies should be fitted to vessels
carrying dangerous goods and for passenger transport.
In the field of physical improvement of the navigation channel marking, there is actually no visible
way of informing the skippers of the water level at the time of their passage. A useful way of informing
skippers and helmsmen of the available water depths is derived from the condition surveys of dangerous
areas for navigation between Huay Xay and Luang Prabang and between Luang Prabang and Pakse. An
easily recognisable solid construction that is clearly visible along the shore up and downstream of
shallow areas in the navigation channel can give valuable information to skippers or pilots on the actual
water level at the time of passage. Chart datum is known to be the average of the lowest low-water
levels over a sufficiently long period of time. All hydrographic maps show the water depths related to
the chart datum (zero level) at a particular location. By adding the height of the water level at the time
of passage to the LAD (least available water depth in the particular stretch) pilots can easily calculate