Lighthouses
Operation and ownership of the lighthouse network is twofold. State-operated lighthouses are intended for navigation on main shipping routes, while port lighthouses, owned and operated by municipalities, are intended as navigational aids into ports. The IMA is responsible for development and operation of the national lighthouse network and supervises and monitors development and operation of port lighthouses and navigational aids.
The IMA has a wide range of lighthouse and navigational equipment. Technological advances have substantially altered the equipment configuration and degree of automation in recent decades. Development of the lighthouse network was largely completed in 1954 with the construction of a lighthouse in the final coastal area to be covered. A total of 104 lighthouses are under IMA supervision. IMA employees handle lighthouse maintenance and charter ships to conduct maintenance of buoys and lighthouses which are inaccessible from land.
Other equipment consists of light buoys, radar transponders, radio beacons, wave measurement buoys and automatic weather stations. The number of wave measurement buoys and weather stations has grown in recent years, in pace with the development of the IMA weather and sea state information system. New technology, however, has increasingly made light buoys and radar transponders redundant. There are around 20 lighthouses in the port lighthouse network, in addition to navigational lights at the ends of wharves and quays, leading line and buoys lighting harbour entrances.
Six radio beacons are in operation: in Reykjanes (SW Iceland), Bjargtangar (West Fjords), Skagatá (N), Raufarhöfn (NE), Djúpivogur (SE) and Skarðsfjara (S). These are primarily used to transmit correction signals to the GPS positioning system using DGPS (Differential GPS). Correction signals make it possible to increase accuracy from one hundred metres to less than ten metres in the broadcasting areas, and have a range of two hundred nautical miles