MARIN research plays key role in new government guidelines for inland waterways in rivers


Rijkswaterstaat is responsible for the design, construction, management and maintenance of the main infrastructure facilities in the Netherlands, including the inland waterway network and water systems. Dick ten Hove, d.t.hove@marin.nl


To support the design and construction, Rijkswaterstaat developed the Waterways Guidelines in 1996, which evolved into the latest 2017 edition (RVW 2017). The RVW 2017 are restricted to waterways with a limited longitudinal flow velocity (less than 0.5 m/s). However, it is evident that in almost all free-flowing rivers this flow velocity is exceeded.


Therefore in 2015 Rijkswaterstaat decided to develop integral guidelines for inland water- ways with a longitudinal flow velocity of more than 0.5 m/s. These will consist of design guidelines, of tables and rules of thumb for dimensioning the waterway in a free-flowing river, as an extension of the existing RVW 2017.


The RVW 2017 provides technically and nautically feasible solutions for the design of the fairway guaranteeing a reliable, smooth and safe journey, by following a prescribed


design scheme. This principle is also leading when drafting guidelines for the navigability of flowing waters. The development of the RVW 2017 to rivers started in 2015 by following the same design scheme as in the existing guidelines, identifying all aspects that would change when considering flowing waters. In this respect, only the aspects that needed adjustment or change in relation to the RVW 2017 guidelines were dealt with. The most important one was the required fairway width in relation to the continuously changing water depth and flow condition. A research agenda covering all aspects that required adjustments was then drawn up.


MARIN coordinated the research programme in close cooperation with Deltares, the Dutch institute for applied research in the field of water and subsurface. In addition to an extensive literature review, we performed


fast-time simulations and traffic flow analyses for the verification of the impact of water flow on the manoeuvring behaviour of a range of inland ship types, dimensioning of a fairway in a meandering river, dimen sio- ning of junctions in a river and the design of harbour entrances and harbours along a river.


Results from the research were integrated into an extended version of the RVW 2017, thereby including guidelines for dimensioning the waterway in a free-flowing river. MARIN and Rijkswaterstaat presented their research during the Smart Rivers conference 2019[1]


.


See marin.nl/publications/guidelines-for- inland-waterways-in-rivers.


[1] Guidelines for inland waterways in rivers, D. ten Hove (MARIN), O.C. Koedijk (Rijkswaterstaat), Smart Rivers 2019, Lyon


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