ABSTRACT
Due to their low energy consumption, low emissions and low external costs compared to other modes of transport, inland waterways are highly regarded in European transport policy. Despite simplified definitions target fairway depths and widths current decision patchworks and tight budgets of responsible waterway administrations are a limiting factor for efficient maintenance and development of inland waterways. In addition, current case-by-case approaches to measure planning instead of aiming at concerted harmonized continuous fairway availability on the entire transport route lead to inefficient spending as one single shallow section on a transport route limits the utilization of the entire vessel fleet at low water periods. The practical results from the implementation of these approaches in a software tool called WAMS (Waterway Asset Management System) on 350 km of the river Danube in Austria underline the importance of an optimization towards a uniform, continuously available and sufficient target fairway depth. This new tool allows for an evaluation of infrastructure quality, calculation of measure extent for different target fairway parameters and an efficient planning of dredging measures on the waterway. Based on this tool we will provide evidence in this paper how an implementation of different continuous levels of service translates into budgeting needs.
