Climate Resilient Inland Waterways: 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.