Good news for those sailing through North Holland: from now on you can have bridge opening requests automatically sent via Water Map Live. This makes sailing a lot easier and you have to wait less. You only need to enable the Network AIS function. That's how it works.

Dutch Version 🇳🇱 | German version 🇩🇪

In collaboration with the province of North Holland, you can now use a great new option with Water Map Live: automatic bridge opening requests. Until now, you always had to call the lock keeper at a bridge or lock via telephone, VHF radio or a button on the brakes. But if you sail with the app and you automatically share your position with the Network AIS function, this is no longer necessary for the more than fifty provincial bridges in North Holland.

From the Ringvaart at the Kaag to Den Helder and from IJmuiden to the Eemmeer: because bridge keepers know where you are and when you will arrive, they can open the bridge for you as soon as you arrive. Sometimes immediately, sometimes they wait a moment until there are some more boats, or they wait a little longer for you if they know you are coming.

This is how it works
The province of North Holland works with a so-called Bridge Management System (BMS) with which the bridges can be controlled. If you are sailing with Water Map Live open on your phone or tablet - and the Network AIS function has been switched on - your position will be compared every 50 meters with that of the bridges in the area. If you have also planned a route, it is clear what your destination is. So as soon as you are within 15 minutes of sailing from a bridge, the BMS will automatically receive a bridge operation request. As a skipper you don't have to do anything about that: turn on Network AIS and go, the app will take care of it for you.

The idea
This project was devised by the province of North Holland, which would like to improve the flow of water and wants to make roads as good as possible. Nowadays, data is essential for this. Together with Water Map Live and the apps Navkid Waterkaart, WinGPS and Waterkaart, the province has been working hard on this in recent months. The system has been thoroughly tested and has now been activated. Every skipper using one of these apps can now send automatic bridge control requests.

So briefly: this is how you use this function

1. Download Water Map Live
2. Turn on Network AIS, you can do this by pressing the N-AIS button at the top of the screen:

3. Plan a route in the app and go sailing

That's it: from now on, bridge keepers throughout North Holland will automatically know that you are coming and they can open the bridge for you. If you sail slower or faster, the opening time will be adjusted automatically. And if you decline, for example, the opening request will be canceled. That also happens automatically.

Have fun sailing!

(P.S. Are you technically inclined and would you like to know more about this system? For this function, Water Map Live works intensively with Open Ship Data, the platform for real-time ship information in Netherlands. You can find more background information about how this system works on the Open Ship Data website.)