Updating century old Congo River navigation maps and revealing their
geomorphological secrets
Abstract
River transport, with more than 17,000 km of navigable channels in the
Congo, is a crucial part of the economy for many of the countries
sharing the river basin and allows the transport of many goods (timber,
charcoal, minerals etc.) and enables access to many areas where roads do
not exist. However, river transport falls short of the role it could
play in development of the region and has actually declined since the
Congo basin countries became independent in the 1960s. This is in part
due to years of civil unrest, aging equipment, a lack of infrastructure
maintenance, and the poor support and operation of public waterway
agencies. River navigation maps are a specialist form of map
specifically designed to allow safe navigation of river traffic such as
for barges carrying cargo. Boat captains use them as they travel along
the river to follow the advised navigation route and avoid hazards such
as submerged rocks and shallow channels. The navigation maps for the
1,700 km of river between Kinshasa and Kisangani are issued by RVF
(Régie de Voie Fluvial), the state river navigation authority, and are
therefore used by all boat captains. These maps originate from the early
1900s and have not been updated since colonial times. As part of the
CRuHM project we are exploring the possibility of updating these maps
using modern remote sensing methods, together with RVFs experienced
input. As part of the update process, RVF have provided us with detailed
digital scans of the original navigation maps and we are geo-referencing
these to modern geospatial projections, in line with the remote sensing
data. This provides us with a unique opportunity to compare snapshots of
the river system geomorphology separated by nearly 100 years. We will
show the current state of the project and some of the river secrets we
have discovered so far.