President DAI Jiqun Visits PIANC Headquarters
On February 4th, President DAI Jiqun led a delegation to visit the headquarters of the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure (PIANC) in Brussels, Belgium, and held working talks with PIANC President Francisco Lefler and Secretary-General Geert van Cappellen. PIANC Executive Committee member and InCom Commission Vice Chair, and NHRI Senior Engineer ZHAO Gensheng participated in the exchange.
President DAI Jiqun briefed PIANC on the significant progress made by NHRI in recent years through its deep involvement in and promotion of PIANC's related work. He stated that NHRI highly valued cooperation with PIANC and had achieved solid results, such as the compilation and release of the report by the Ship Lift Working Group (PIANC WG207), the successful organization of the Smart Rivers 2022 and the 2023 PIANC InCom Commission Annual Meeting, and the leadership of the Working Group on Capacity Augmentation and Structural Expansion of Existing Inland Water Transport Facilities (PIANC WG266). President DAI Jiqun expressed NHRI’s willingness to continue working with PIANC to contribute to global exchanges and cooperation on key technologies for navigation structures and the upgrading of existing transport facilities.
President Francisco Lefler expressed sincere gratitude for NHRI's long-term support of PIANC's various endeavors and highly recognized the key role played by NHRI in working group research, international event organization, and the expansion of cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region. Secretary-General Geert van Cappellen provided a detailed introduction on PIANC's organizational structure and operational mechanisms, and outlined recent key projects and cooperation plans.
Both sides agreed that, in response to the common goals of green and low-carbon transformation and resilience enhancement of global waterborne transport infrastructure, they should build upon the existing strong cooperation to further strengthen synergistic collaboration in key areas, such as key technologies for navigation structures, capacity increase of existing facilities, development of technical standards and guidelines, organization of international conferences, and capacity building. In the future, they will jointly promote the formation of more high-quality outcomes that are replicable, scalable, and transferable, contributing professional wisdom and strength to the high-quality development of waterborne transport infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region and even globally.
