Welcome to the USACE Planning Center of Expertise for Inland Navigation (PCXIN) Home Page.

We were established as a regional center in 1981 by the Ohio River Division, now known as the Great Lakes and Ohio River Division (LRD). The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Director of Civil Works designated our regional center as the national center on August 25, 2003. It is one of several national centers of expertise to support the accomplishment of planning studies for Inland navigation, deep draft navigation, ecosystem restoration, hurricane and storm damage prevention, water supply and reallocation, hydropower and flood damage reduction. The national planning centers are part of an initiative to improve the quality and effectiveness of the Corps planning process for water resources projects called the Planning Excellence Program (PEP). The PEP includes training and work force capability improvement, enhanced quality assurance and control efforts, process improvement and regional and national planning centers.

The Center primarily focuses on economic evaluation and plan formulation, since environmental evaluation and compliance is a basic planning function in all districts. We also provide expertise in the development of engineering reliability analysis for navigation structures, as it is closely related to the economics. Additionally, some environment expertise is provided because navigation systems analysis outputs are used in system assessments of environmental impacts of navigation improvements.

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