Ports face the dual challenge of keeping waterways navigable through continuous dredging while treating most dredged sediment as waste. Across Europe, only about 1% of the 200 million m³ dredged annually is put to beneficial use. This thesis addresses this challenge for the Port of Rotterdam, where offshore disposal remains the dominant practice because of its low cost and operational simplicity but provides no resource recovery and creates environmental impacts.

The research investigates whether participatory logistical modelling can support better decision-making on sediment reuse. An open-source simulation model (OpenCLSim) was developed to represent dredging, transport, and processing chains for three strategies: (1) continued offshore disposal, (2) land raising via truck or pipeline, and (3) reuse in concrete after dewatering. Stakeholders from the port authority, government agencies, contractors, and researchers were engaged through interviews, surveys, and workshops to co-define evaluation criteria and weigh their relative importance. Model results were combined with a multi-criteria decision analysis to rank alternatives.

Findings show that while offshore disposal remains the most cost- and time-efficient solution, pipeline-based land raising approaches cost parity at high volumes and delivers co-benefits for flood protection and habitat creation. Concrete reuse shows strong circular economy potential but is limited by dewatering costs, logistics, and regulatory barriers.

The study concludes that sediment management should be treated as a portfolio challenge, combining conventional disposal with targeted reuse projects. Participatory modelling proved valuable for exploring trade-offs, testing “what-if” scenarios, and building consensus—providing a transferable framework for more sustainable sediment management.

The design, production and testing of the Bluetooth Ultrasimple Gamepad, or BUG for short, is laid out in this report. In the current market, most of the controllers available are multi-button controllers with analogue sticks. These controllers are expensive and can not be used for many web browser games which rely on a keyboard input to work. In order for these controllers to work, a video game or self developed app can be used, but this can be difficult or expensive for many users. In the implementation of the BUG, the controller was made to be used by a single hand, having a clear ”main” button, an intuitive reconfiguration scheme and to have Bluetooth connection which is present in a lot of laptops and PCs currently in use. With this approach, the user can have a cheap, simple and comfortable alternative to existing gamepads. It can be stated
that, although not for everybody, the BUG is a good and fun alternative for users. This can be seen because the general user experience is rated at 5 out of 5 points by 50% of the participants, 4 out of 5 by 46.7% of the participants and only 1, or 3.3% of the participants has given a rating of 2 out of 5.