A new asset management approach for inland waterways

Inland waterways in Europe face a resource patchwork, low availability and effectiveness of investments leading to a declining importance compared to other modes of transport. To overcome these setbacks the presented waterway asset management approach aims at an increased availability of fairway widths and depths in days per year. Based on periodic riverbed surveys, current water levels and discharge the impact of maintenance and river engineering works on the availability of fairway widths and depths in days per year can be analysed. Any resulting increase in availability on a transport route leads to a decrease in transport costs that are considered as a benefit of the implemented measures. Innovative alert systems based on an empirically derived behaviour of critical bottlenecks allow preventive measures and lead to real-time availability information for the transport industry. The approach enables an optimization regarding individual measures on river sections as well as of investment strategies for constrained budgets, recommended fairway conditions or total costs of waterway agencies and the transport industry. The presented asset management approach is currently being implemented on the Austrian stretch of the river Danube and may be extended to the entire waterway in the future.