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F.R.S. Vinke

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A Case Study on the Climate Resilience of Dutch Inland Waterway Transport Policies

Journal article (2025) - Frederik Vinke, Cornelis van Dorsser, Mark van Koningsveld
Inland waterway transport (IWT) is a key function of river systems worldwide. It is vulnerable to climate change, specifically to discharge extremes, and competes for water with multiple other functions. A clear framework describing its interests to inform decision-making during regular conditions as well as during climate extremes is as yet unavailable in the literature. To address this gap we examine how inland shipping is taken into account in waterway policies in the Netherlands. We apply the frame of reference method to ‘objectify’ current inland waterway transport (IWT) policies, addressing the themes of waterway capacity, safety, service level, and sustainability. By ‘objectifying’ we mean turning the implicit into an explicit ‘object’ of study on the one hand and revealing underlying ‘objectives’ on the other. We show that policies for waterway capacity and service level are well developed, while waterway safety policies are more implicit, and waterway resilience lacks a quantitative decision framework. We furthermore show that current policies mainly focus on regular conditions, leaving it unclear what changes under extreme river discharge conditions. The results provide important insights into shipping-related decision challenges during climate extremes, highlighting aspects that should be developed further to improve the climate resilience of inland shipping. While some of these implications are specific to the Dutch case, the method applied here can also be used for other river systems that support multiple functions. ...

A novel systemic approach

Extreme precipitation and droughts cause discharge variations in river systems, which impact Inland Waterway Transport (IWT). Disrupted hinterland connections affect the performance of sea and inland ports, which, in turn, may disrupt (global) maritime supply chains with far reaching economic effects. The prolonged drought of 2018 in North-western Europe, for example, caused significant economic losses for Germany’s industry. The reduced IWT capacity affected the production of energy, steel and chemical products. Discharge extremes reduce the reliability of IWT. To prevent an undesired modal shift to road or rail, water transport networks need to become more climate resilient. We believe that to date IWT has received relatively (too) little attention in climate resilience studies, and measures have often been proposed from an oversimplified perspective. Furthermore, rivers and canals support multiple user functions, so IWT measures should be evaluated against other functions, and vice versa. This paper discusses a novel method to better account for IWT, using a systemic perspective and an integral approach. ...

A 10 years case study of the Rhine

Inland shipping is a key modality for freight transport between the seaport of Rotterdam and the industrial areas in Germany and Switzerland. The recent droughts of 2018, 2019 and 2022 have clearly demonstrated how discharge related supply chain disruptions cause substantial economic damages in the hinterland. The IPCC predicts that climate change will increase the variability in water cycles globally, making future extremes more frequent and more severe. In-depth insight into the response of inland shipping to discharge extremes is crucial to better anticipate and potentially mitigate this climate risk. Existing literature takes (a small number of) representative vessels and estimates corridor scale climate risks through extrapolation. Recent droughts have shown that this approach may give unrealistic results. Newspaper articles and reports from the sector suggest that the fleet composition and vessel deployment change during high and low discharge extremes, and cascading effects are likely to occur. So far, however, no objective data on this phenomenon has been reported in literature. This paper analyses ten years of IVS and discharge data, for the period between 2010 and 2020, revealing in detail for the first time how discharge levels and vessel deployment are related. This improved insight into shipping response is crucial for any corridor to accurately estimate the climate risk of discharge extremes. While this paper focuses on the Rhine corridor, the proposed method is applicable to other corridors as well. ...
Other (2022) - Frederik Vinke
Veel mensen herinneren zich de droge periode uit 2018 en het hoge water op de Maas. Deze events hadden een grote impact op de scheepvaart en uiteindelijk op de levering van goederen in verschillende Europese landen. Dit soort events zullen in de toekomst vaker optreden en grote gevolgen hebben voor de totale samenleving en de economie. Het hebben van goede strategieën en maatregelen om de impact van dit soort events te beperken, vraagt om een gedegen aanpak en onderzoek. Frederik Vinke, promovendus binnen de vakgroep Ports and Waterways (TU Delft), ondersteund door SmartPort, past een nieuwe methodiek toe waarbij de interactie tussen de rivier en de scheepvaart op een systemisch niveau wordt gemodelleerd. Tegelijkertijd worden op micro niveau de schepen met eigen vervoersopdrachten gemodelleerd. ...
The river Rhine is one of Europe’s busiest waterways and is part of the Rhine-Alpine corridor. In 2018 the river experienced a severe low discharge extreme. This impacted the river’s transport capacity for a period of several months, causing shortages of source materials and fuels in regions far in-land. Historically, prolonged droughts of this magnitude are not uncommon. Concerns have been raised, however, that climate change may further increase their frequency and severity. Additionally the increased proportion of larger vessels in the overall fleet composition has made the supply of cargo via the river Rhine more vulnerable to reduced water depths. A better understanding of the risks and effects of sustained low water levels for Inland Waterway Transport network performance is therefore essential to enable sensible mitigation. An integral model that explicitly links the state of the river to supply chain performance at the scale of corridors, however, appears to be not yet available. This paper suggests a novel method to explicitly include the cascading effects of low discharge events (and mitigating measures) in climate risk assessments of waterborne supply chain performance, at system level. It is shown that its implementation can describe cascading effects and climate risks for fleet management and terminal operation. ...
Worldwide, rivers provide important socio-economic and environmental functions and are essential to human well-being. The growing demand of user-functions and the change in river conditions due to large-scale morphology and climate change, increase the pressure on lowland river systems (e.g. Rhine, Meuse, Danube and Mississippi). To ensure a multi-functional river system, challenges related to uncertain exogenous trends should be tackled. This asks for an integrated approach that accounts for large-scale system behaviour rather than a sectorial approach. This paper proposes a framework that provides support to the river management decision-making process by assessing policy-options against uncertain exogenous processes based on the quantified performance of river functions. Hence, a case study of the Dutch Rhine was carried out, proposing a set of models to simulate river conditions and quantify the performance of the river functions navigation, nature and flood protection. The framework quantifies and monetized the impact of climate change and morphology on the user-functions in 2050. The application of the framework reveals a reduction of shipping efficiency, reduction of floodplain inundation and an increase in flood level. The monetization of river functions allowed an optimization of the policy-options, while dealing with uncertain processes as climate change and morphological changes. We demonstrated the merits of the assessment framework with a case study for the Dutch Rhine, as it provides useful quantitative information to support to decision-making in integrated river management. ...
Inland Water Transport (IWT) is one of the modalities for freight transport between the ports of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Antwerp and the hinterland in Germany. Transport over water between these areas is possible as a result of the presence of the Rhine, but more important are the navigation conditions on the river. As a result of climate change, these navigable conditions on the river will deteriorate in the future by lower extreme river discharges and sea level rise. The available navigable water depth will decrease on the Rhine branches Waal, Nederrijn en IUssel due to lower river discharges in dry periods, while the available head clearance under bridges becomes smaller for transport of containers in the Rhine-Meuse-delta. The worsening navigable conditions are amplified by long term-processes in the river system and trends in the freight transport sector. This will lead to the reduction of load capacity of vessels, an increase of travel time and travel costs. Stakeholders in the IWT-sector (port authorities, waterway authorities, shippers and barge operators) have the urgency to find out where potential bottlenecks may arise in the future and to develop mitigation measures. In the current literature numerical models are applied to assess the impact of climate change on Inland Water Transport for specific relations or processes. Simulations with those models is executed for one climate scenario or one time horizon for a larger part of the IWT -network. Other researchers make use of analytical relations applied on one or two bottlenecks for multiple climate scenarios and time horizons. An integral assessment to setup an overview of potential bottlenecks for multiple climate scenarios and time horizons based on an integrated model is lacking. In this project an integrated assessment meta-model is built to examine navigation conditions as a result of climate change and the impact on IWT. The focus of the first part of the project is to assess the climate change impacts on IWT. In the second part the aim is to develop and assess a number of mitigation measures. In this paper, first, an analysis of potential bottlenecks is executed. As a case study, the integrated assessment meta-model is applied on the river branches Waal and IUssel for one climate scenario and time horizon. The results give insight into the locations where problems will occur for navigation conditions and mitigation measures are needed to improve the conditions in case of low river discharges. The method and model will be applied for the assessment of mitigation measures in the second phase of the research project. The outcomes of the two research phases shall be used to define policies by waterway manager Rijkswaterstaat for efficient IWT in the future over the river Rhine or to develop new logistic concepts by ports, shipping companies or barge operators. ...