Evaluating stakeholders’ interactions for future autonomous European inland waterway transport

Journal article, 2026

The European Inland Waterway Transport (E-IWT) industry is transitioning towards a new reality governed by higher levels of autonomous systems. While the E-IWT system is preparing for future changes in technical, legal and business frameworks, it is important to examine the system from a socio-technical perspective. Using a Socio-Technical System (STS) framework, the IWT system was segmented into four subsystems: Technical, Personnel, Work Design, and the Environment. Twenty-nine (29) actors covering 19 nodes within the 4 subsystems were interviewed using a pre-questionnaire survey, which was analysed employing a thematic analysis. Two themes emerged as key findings detailing the subsystems in 3 different scenarios: 1. Work as Done- (a) current conventional operation; 2. Work as Imagined- (b) manned and (c) unmanned remote-control operations. For all 3 scenarios, the results identified task, organisation, data and information for 4 subsystems, and existing or foreseeable gaps to the emergence towards higher Levels of Automation (LOA) through those scenarios. Findings forecast a shift in roles and responsibilities from the vessel to the shoreside, likely including a ‘shift in hub’ from vessel-centric operations to Remote Operation Centres (ROCs), requiring real-time communications, extended redundancies, goal-based regulatory changes, and ROC design requirements. The result further highlights misalignment among different subsystems and the necessity of integrated socio-technical approaches, including stakeholder collaboration, regulatory alignment, and system standardisation, to support the transition towards higher LOA in E-IWT.