Nancy Scheijven

Having worked as a business consultant at IT partner Ordina, Nancy joined the Dutch Government. After working as director of asset and environmental management, she became director of vessel traffic and water management at Rijkswaterstaat. Her organization is responsible for the daily operation of about 450 locks and bridges, vessel traffic management services, incident management and law enforcement. It also manages water quantity in times of drought and floods. Nancy deals with future developments in autonomous shipping. Rijkswaterstaat supports the maturation of smart shipping and invests in its infrastructure to give autonomous ships a warm welcome.

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Presentation

Autonomous testing in the Netherlands – what we learned from it

The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management has made testing with smart ships possible on inland waterways as well as on territorial seas. Up to 2020, five official tests have been carried out. Furthermore, two roundtable conferences on the subject of legislation have taken place. We expect that in the forthcoming years, automation on large ships will mainly be used to help the present crew. That is why we decided to put our energy into drone-type vessels first. Our goal is to make the use of these unmanned free-floating vessels legally possible and to define criteria for the safe use of these water drones.