European Dredging Industry Overview with Emphasis on Geotechnical Descriptors

Abstract : This report briefly describes the state of the art of dredging in The Netherlands, Belgium, and England and the results of literature searches and personal interviews in these countries regarding the present use of geotechnical descriptors in the European dredging industry. Geotechnical descriptors are used to describe or define the geotechnical properties of bottom sediments which affect their ability to be dredged. Dredging research and the dredging industry in Europe are considered to be more technically and highly developed in some areas than the dredging industry in the United States because of governmental support. Because of this industry/government agreement much of the dredging research is proprietary, and it was difficult to determine whether there was a systematic approach to determine the ease or difficulty of dredging. There does not appear to be a standard set of geotechnical descriptors in the European dredging community. It was felt that there was enough public information available to aid the Corps of Engineers in development of standard dredging descriptors for bottom sediments. Classification, Dredging, Soil sediments, Descriptors, European, The Netherlands, Dredgeability, Geotechnical