1. Water depth prediction for optimizing the IWT sector
Rolien van der Mark
SMART RIVERS 2017 – Pittsburgh, USA, September 2017

2. Inland Waterway Transport in EU
Port of Rotterdam (NL) is the hub of Europe
Some numbers:
About inland ships in EU
ton cargo each day
liter fuel each day
kg CO2 emission each year
Alluvial rivers, continuous dredging / sediment management
20 september 2017

3. Needs from IWT-sector
If we would know more about the actual state of the river:
Optimal loading of ships
Optimal sailing along the river
Better ship performance (fuel/tkm)
Reduction in emission of CO2
Efficient dredging …
…..
More reliable ETA
Waterborne transport more attractive alternative for road/rail
Accurate and actual river data and tools are needed!
20 september 2017

4. CoVadem: big data for smarter inland shipping
19 juli 2018
CoVadem: big data for smarter inland shipping
Inland ships measure, we log & store data
Position, UKC, fuel consumption, …
Now ~50 ships, will increase
Existing sensors
Valuable data set
Ship data  smart tools
Also see presentation by Van Wirdum, at this Smart Rivers Conference (2017)

5. One of the objectives of project CoVadem+
Development of a (mobile) application that displays actual and forecasted water depths in realtime
To optimally plan how much cargo to take (before trip)
To optimally sail through deep parts of the river (during a trip)
Traject: Rotterdam – Maxau  600 km of Rhine river
20 september 2017

6. End-User meetings Needs inland shipping companies: Forecasts
Better forecasts of water levels
Forecasts of water depths
Insight in how forecasts are derived
Reliable data about ship and the river
Actual bed levels
Measuring is knowing
No tools available
Tools for more efficient loading and sailing!
20 september 2017

7. Approach
Actual + forecasted water levels are calculated using an operational 1D model
Actual + forecasted water depths
Maxau
Actual bed levels derived from CoVadem data
Rotterdam
20 september 2017

8. CoVadem+ architecture
DIM
FEWS PI Service (scalar data)
Webaplicatie
proxy
FEWS Import Module
CoVadem track data
API
DCM
FEWS Archive
Netcdf
DIM
FEWS Archive Data storage
Preprocess
Netcdf + xml
Netcdf
DIM
Matlab processing
System runs 24/7
System runs automatically
Produces forecasts every 2 hours
Aggregates realtime CoVadem track data
Postprocess
20 september 2017

9. Operational 1D model Meteorology 20 september 2017 Hydrology
Water level
20 september 2017

10. Actual bed levels – validation
CoVadem data used to derive realtime bed level
Extensive validation performed: multibeam versus CoVadem track data
Period of 4 months of CoVadem tracks, > 500 tracks from 50 ships
In general, there is good agreement between both data sets
More details and results in Van der Mark et al. (2015)
Automatic calibration possible at fixed points (Cotteleer & van der Mark, 2017)
Bed level (m + datum)
5 m
10 km
Distance along the river (km)
20 september 2017

11. Actual bed levels – processing
Ship tracks
UKC
Water depth
Bed level
bed level
Gridded
per polygon
Min bed level
Every 2 hours new actual bed level calculated realtime based on newest CoVadem data
20 september 2017

12. First beta version of application
20 september 2017

13. Summary & Conclusions
The CoVadem initiative works on cleaner & smarter inland shipping by gathering data by ships and developing services
One objective of Project CoVadem+ is the development of a (mobile) application that displays actual and forecasted water depths in realtime
Needs of end-users are investigated
Operational system has been setup that calculates actual and forecasted water levels, bed levels and water depths along the river 6 days ahead
First beta version has been released successfullylast month
Application will be extended with bridge clearance and other wishes of users
20 september 2017