Delta Life 12

15 DELTARES, OCTOBER 2019 and waterways All stakeholders at the table One third of all goods transported from the port of Rotterdam go by water, as do almost half of all containers. During the severe drought in 2018, ship capacity was so limited that Switzerland had to draw on its strategic stocks to fill supermarket shelves, and goods could not be picked up in the port of Rotterdam. This illustrates the importance of water-borne transport – and it will be clear how enormous that importance is. As in the railway network, there are bottlenecks in the waterways are exposed by climate change. Entire catchment area At first sight, those risks would seem to be limited to shallow sections caused by drought, or high water levels that make it impossible for shipping to pass under a bridge. But rivers are about more than just transport. They are a source of drinking water, water for agricultural fields and crops, and water in amounts that will allow locks to be used and prevent salinisation. And on top of all that: rivers cross borders and, ideally, decisions should be made for the entire catchment area. Johan Boon and Rolien van der Mark of Deltares argue that, in order to tackle the bottle­ necks affecting the different users of the river and sometimes the different regions, all the stakeholders should be seated at the table: water managers, farmers, skippers, water companies, you name it. Sailing in 'trains' But there is more. Technological inno­ vation still opens up numerous oppor­ tunities to improve water transport, such as sharing climate data and model predictions in the logistics chain in order to make risk-driven decisions. Or the application of knowledge and data about the physical system to ship design (shallower draught and perhaps longer ships) so they can continue sailing in 'dry' conditions, whether autonomously or not, and in 'trains'. But then it is important to know how 'dry' things can get. So identifying bottlenecks also opens up opportunities and gives the logistics sector an enormous knowledge boost. Flexible switching and the better use of the various 'modalities' make transport more efficient and sustainable: if water­ ways are not navigable, more goods will be moved by rail; when the roads are congested, more goods will be sent by water. The economic damage resulting from a dike failure can be determined very precisely but we still find it very difficult to get to grips with excessively high or low water levels. The severe drought of 2018 probably cost the Dutch economy hundreds of millions of euros. But we won't have a precise picture as long as the people involved don't exchange knowledge. So there is still a lot of work to be done. For more information: johan.boon@deltares.nl rolien.vandermark@deltares.nl WATERWAYS