Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Corps web changes

In case you hadn't noticed, the Corps of Engineers' vessel locator web site is undergoing some changes. In fact, they're hardly updating it, as they're making some changes. I wrote to the corps to ask what was going on, and this is what they sent back:

 A new publicly accessible web site called Corps Locks is now available. The website contains lock and vessel specific information derived from the United States Army Corps of Engineers Lock Performance Monitoring System (LPMS). The information contained here represents hourly and daily snapshots of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) data on U.S. flag vessels and foreign vessels operating in U.S. waterways that transited a Corps owned or operated lock structure. This site has the traffic and hydrologic information submitted by the locks via LPMS. This data replaces the same data formerly on the Navigation Information Connection.  Information on detailed company or commodities is considered privileged information and is precluded from the Corps Locks website. Additional features are planned for future release. The URL is http://corpslocks.usace.army.mil/
Also, available to assist the public are .com and .us URLs, a Facebook page and Twitter page.

Now I'm in the process of changing the links on the lefthand rail on the page. If I get something wrong, please be kind and point it out to me.





2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know why some of the Lock reports are up-dated daily and some are not.Most river familys use the site daily to keep track of family members.esp A/MA boats.

Anonymous said...

The Lock Queue Report is updated twice an hour with any new vessel data entered by the locks.

Find A Vessel is the same.

The Lock Status Report is also updated twice an hour. However, some locks enter hydrology information once per day while others enter data more frequently. The input range varies from not at all to every fifteen minutes.
These are local decisions.