Abstract

The inland waterway system carries a significant percentage of the national"br" freight. Maintenance operations including dredging and dam repair are important"br" to maintaining the effective and efficient operation of the system. Dredging projects"br" are for recovery of the navigational channel draft from the shoaling effect while"br" lock/dam repair is about maintaining a maximum possible operational hours to"br" reduce the waiting and delay of vessels therein. The special feature in this study"br" is that the shoaling effect is random, as is subject to weather and other effects."br" This study specially deals with maintenance fund allocation to these maintenance"br" requests by first proposing a multimodal approach for formulating the waterway"br" maintenance problem in a connected network, which considers rivers, locks/dams,"br" and highways and railways.

Abstract

Recent research on traffic development and transport economics in the Danube corridor revealed the importance"br" of improved navigation conditions on the waterway Danube. The Waterway Asset Management System (WAMS)"br" of viadonau allows a real-time calculation of fairway availability, planning of dredging measures, sediment"br" management and budget estimations for various target conditions. Aligning the fairway path and narrowing the"br" fairway width are very cost-efficient solutions especially in low water periods. However, actual vessel trajectories"br" and draughts loaded show deviations leading to questions regarding vessel course and loading capacity alignment."br" Based on anonymized traffic data and vessel trajectories a utilization analysis regarding available fairway depths"br" and distribution of traffic flows has been implemented in the WAMS. The paper provides an overview on the"br" results and direct consequences for the optimization of maintenance measures and fairway alignment. Future"br" developments may allow route planning and an optimization of vessel loading on the entire waterway.