Since the US Congress first appropriated money in 1824 to improve navigation on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers by removing sandbars, snags, and other obstacles, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has been responsible for the development and maintenance of navigable inland and coastal waterways, ports, and harbors throughout the United States. Safe, reliable, efficient, and environmentally sustainable waterborne transportation systems are a major means of commercial transportation. In addition, they are important to recreation and integral to national defense.

To accomplish these responsibilities, USACE staff collect, store, visualize, analyze, and distribute huge amounts of navigation-related data. The Navigation Data Integration Framework (NDIF), which forms the basis of this Navigation Portal, is an effort to establish a detailed methodology to link data and tools across the Navigation Business line and make them easily available to our stakeholders.

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Click Resource Discovery to search by keyword for one or more specific navigation-related terms, or click Explore Navigation to peruse the programs, tools, and data available through this Navigation Portal. For ease of use, they are categorized within six functional areas:

• Dredging—Maintenance of inland and coastal waterways, ports, and harbors
• Sediment & Ecosystem Management —Systems approaches for planning, management, and implementation across projects
• Infrastructure & Asset Management—Engineering, design, operation, monitoring, maintenance, and repair of coastal and inland structures
• Marine Transportation System—Navigation performance measures
• River Information Services—Traffic management infrastructure on the inland waterway network
• Surveying & Mapping—Boundary, hydrographic, topographic, and bathymetric surveys and visualization

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Did You Know?

• USACE ports and waterways serve 41 of the 50 states, including all states east of the Mississippi River
• USACE operates and maintains nearly 12,000 miles of inland and intracoastal shallow-draft waterways (9'-14') and 13,000 miles of deep-draft (greater than 14') channels
• USACE maintains 926 coastal, Great Lakes, and inland harbors
• 236 lock chambers at 191 lock sites on 41 waterways serve commerce
• The deepest lock is John Day Lock on the Columbia River (110')