Mission

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the Nation's waterway system to insure efficient and safe passage of commercial and recreational vessels. This ensures efficient and safe passage of commercial and recreational vessels. The support and management of economically sound navigation projects is dependent upon reliable navigation data. The Corps of Engineers, through the Institute for Water Resources, Navigation Data Center, exercises its Federal responsibility for establishing and maintaining a variety of water transportation information systems.

The Corps has the Federal responsibility for establishing and maintaining a variety of U.S. water transportation information systems. These include databases and statistics pertaining to waterborne commodity and vessel movements, domestic commercial vessel characteristics, port and waterway facilities, lock facilities, lock operations, and navigation dredging projects. All public data are available through the NDC website.

The NDC's main office in Alexandria, Virginia, houses all but the waterborne commerce and vessels databases. These databases are operated and maintained by the NDC's Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center in New Orleans, Louisiana. Although organizations within the Corps of Engineers are the primary users, the data and information are available to all government agencies, organizations and individuals.

To ensure that Corps decisions are based on the best available data, database modernization is continual. This provides more timely, accurate and flexible information. Modernization includes standardizing terms, software and hardware upgrades, integrating NDC databases, and the application of varied data access techniques.