Mark van Koningsveld

Delft University of Technology | TU · Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences (CEG)

Hydraulic engineering infrastructures are of concern to many people and are likely to interfere with the environment. Moreover, they are supposed to keep on functioning for many years. In times of rapid societal and environmental change this implies that sustainability and adaptability are important attributes. These are central to Building with Na...

Before you lies the book ‘Ports and Waterways - Navigating the changing world’, written by the Ports and Waterways team, part of the Civil Engineering and Geosciences faculty at Delft University of Technology. It integrates the content of a number of separate lecture notes we used in our teaching activities and updates this information where releva...

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 mag...

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 chan...

Cross-habitat facilitative processes can enhance seascape restoration outcomes but there is uncertainty around the spatial dependencies of these processes across habitats. We synthesised the influence of environmental parameters on six processes underpinning cross-habitat facilitation and identified the linear distances over which they operate betw...

Purpose Maintenance dredging can often hinder port operations resulting in waiting times for seagoing vessels. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamics between maintenance dredging activities and seagoing vessels, specifically focusing on how waiting times can be reduced. Then, the role of selecting different maintenance dredging st...

Reducing waiting times is crucial for ports to be efficient and competitive. Important causes of waiting times are cascading interactions between realistic hydrodynamics, accessibility policies, vessel-priority rules, and detailed berth availability. The main challenges are determining the cause of waiting and finding rational solutions to reduce w...

The marine environment faces continuous anthropogenic pressures, including infrastructural developments at a global scale. Integration of nature-inclusive measures in the design of infrastructural development is increasingly encouraged, but a lack of coordination results in fragmentation of project-based measures, failing to meet the desired overal...

Reducing waiting times is crucial for ports to be efficient and competitive. Important causes of waiting times are cascading interactions between realistic hydrodynamics, accessibility policies, vessel-priority rules, and detailed berth availability. The main challenges are determining the cause of waiting and finding rational solutions to reduce w...

With the rapid population growth, urban areas encounter substantial challenges like congestion, increased emissions, and pressure on existing infrastructure. In response to these challenges, we explore the advantages of integrating inland waterways and last-mile delivery in urban logistics networks. The objective is to design an optimal urban logis...

Efficient port operations require minimizing turnaround time which is the total duration of a vessel's stay in the port and encompasses waiting, maneuvering, berthing, and de-berthing times. The turnaround time can be reduced by optimizing arrivals and departures, maximizing berth availability, facilitating cargo handling, and maintaining water dep...

Climate change puts stress on the efficient operation of lock complexes. During more frequent and more severe periods of drought, freshwater losses and saltwater intrusion fluxes through lock operations have to be kept to a minimum to guarantee sufficient freshwater availability. Reduction of the number of lock operations is a measure that is frequ...

The planning and construction of offshore wind parks reduces the margin for error of nearby shipping activities. During the last couple of years, several incidents on the North Sea have raised the attention for the risk of ship-ship and ship-infrastructure collisions. Although often not the primary cause, environmental conditions play an important...

PIANC Task Group 234 concludes that the "path to decarbonization of inland waterway transport is different for different corridors and in different countries". This calls for an approach that can consider large-scale differences as well as local influences when evaluating the emissions of inland vessels. This paper demonstrates the use of a so-call...

A key challenge in the energy transition for Inland Water Transport is the functional design of bunker networks and first-order dimensioning of individual bunker stations. A fundamental ingredient for this is an improved understanding of how upstream energy supply (‘well-to-bunker-station’) and downstream demand (‘bunker-station-to-tank’) may inter...

Several measures have been developed to prevent emissions from inland water transportation. However, it is challenging to weigh all the aspects to identify the pathway that will ultimately result in zero-emission inland shipping. A data-driven virtual representation of the inland shipping system can be used to evaluate zero-emission strategies, eff...

This study integrates strategic decisions and operational control systems in autonomous shipping. By providing ships with situational information and adding a virtual operator, we show that vessels can make informed choices regarding their route and engine settings. To demonstrate this integration, we developed new components and put these to the t...

A number of measures have been developed to prevent emissions from inland water transport (IWT). However, it is challenging to weigh all the aspects to identify the pathway that will ultimately result in zero-emission inland shipping. A data-driven virtual representation of the inland shipping system can be used to evaluate zero-emission strategies...

A key challenge in the energy transition for Inland Water Transport is the functional design of bunker networks and the first-order dimensioning of individual bunker stations. A fundamental ingredient for this is an improved understanding of how the upstream energy supply (‘well-to-bunker-station’) and downstream demand (‘bunker-station-to-tank’) m...

The efficiency of urban logistics is vital for economic prosperity and quality of life in cities. However, rapid urbanization poses significant challenges, such as congestion, emissions, and strained infrastructure. This paper addresses these challenges by proposing an optimal urban logistic network that integrates urban waterways and last-mile del...

Ports strive to maximize their revenues through being sufficiently nautically accessible for sea-going vessels while minimizing dredging efforts, among many other objectives. These two objectives form an interesting trade-off as they are both dependent on the chosen maintained bed level. Due to system complexities, the design of maintained bed leve...

In the 2015 Paris agreement, countries committed to implementing measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming. For the maritime industry specifically, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has proposed measures for energy efficiency of vessels and candidate measures regarding fuel choice and speed optimisation. This a...

Marine reef ecosystems have degraded massively worldwide, and restoration efforts have as yet not managed to realize the scale required to reverse continued degradation. To achieve effective scales, scientific insights in restoration methods should be paired with industry-based approaches used for infrastructural development. We illustrate by five...

PIANC provides guidance and technical advice for sustainable waterborne transport infrastructure. To address the challenge of making inland navigation infrastructure sustainable, a Task Group “Infrastructure for the decarbonisation of Inland Water Transport” (TG234) was set up in January 2021. The objective of the TG was to identify knowledge gaps...

The availability of supporting bunker infrastructure for zero-emission energy sources will be key to accommodate zero-emission inland waterway transport (IWT). However, it remains unclear which (mix of) zero-emission energy sources to prepare for, and how to plan the bunker infrastructure in relative positions and required capacity at corridor scal...

Incorporation of ecology and ecosystem services into marine infrastructural developments has gained interest over the last decades. Growing attention is given to combine the massive roll-out of offshore wind farms in the North Sea with reinstating the once rich but nowadays nearly extinct European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis). However, the practical...

There is a global trend of automation of container terminals. However, there is a lack of literature to guide automation projects for brownfield terminals. Therefore, the experiences and lessons learnt from historical brownfield automation of container terminals are a valuable source of information to guide future projects. This paper describes the...

Van Oord successfully implemented discrete event simulation to operate more cost-efficiently and environmentally friendly. Discrete event simulation allows for optimization of a mixed fleet (hoppers, cutters, barges,...) in the tender as well as in the execution stage. Optimizations can target a range of performance indicators, like cost, fuel, spi...

The North Sea was once abundantly covered with hard substrates such as oyster beds, coarse peat banks and glacial erratics, providing habitat to a rich community of marine species. Most of these habitats were destroyed by bottom-trawl fisheries over the past century, and today, the seabed hosts a relatively poor species community. Emerging offshore...

Positive feedbacks driving habitat‐forming species recovery and population growth are often lost as ecosystems degrade. For such systems, identifying mechanisms that limit the re‐establishment of critical positive feedbacks is key to facilitating recovery. Theory predicts the primary drivers limiting system recovery shift from biological to physica...

Ports form a vital link in the global maritime supply chain, and adherence to the UN sustainable goals in each port development and operation is all-important. Improving the sustainability performance of port infrastructure requires identifying all relevant aspects of sustainability, defining suitable performance measures, applying tools for quanti...

Seaport operability is key to the economic viability of ports. Metocean conditions (e.g., wind, short waves, and infragravity waves) affect this operability when certain thresholds are exceeded. This paper describes a method for the global mapping of seaport operability risk indicators using open-source metocean data. This global-scale assessment p...

Hydraulic engineering infrastructure is supposed to keep functioning for many years and is likely to interfere with both the natural and the social environment at various scales. Due to its long life-cycle, hydraulic infrastructure is bound to face changing environmental conditions as well as changes in societal views on acceptable solutions. This...

By definition, Building with Nature solutions utilise services provided by the natural system and/or provide new opportunities to that system. As a consequence, such solutions are sensitive to the status of, and interact with the surrounding system. A thorough understanding of the ambient natural system is therefore necessary to meet the required s...

The rapid degradation of ecosystems jeopardizes the services they provide. Among the most valuable of these services is protection of coastlines by shoreline ecological communities, such as coral reefs, mangroves and salt marshes. Currently, coastal protection potential of ecosystems is estimated primarily as a function of their spatial extent and...

The Building with Nature (BwN) approach developed by Ecoshape suggests that nature-based solutions can be sustainable and cost-effective alternatives for traditional engineering solutions. Widening the solution space by studying and understanding the physical and ecological system in the early stages of port planning and design is more likely to re...

Prolonged periods of drought affect river discharges and cause water levels and available water depth to drop for extended periods of time. Low water depth has a major impact on the loading capacity of inland ships, and as a consequence on the transport capacity of the overall waterborne supply chain. Individual ship owners have detailed knowledge...

The amount of transported cargo via the Dutch Inland Waterways was 324 million ton in 2019 (Geest, 2019). Most of it was transported via the river Waal, an important connection of the network in the Netherlands. A high performance of this waterway is essential for companies in Germany and disruptions in the supply chain cause delays and incr...

Accelerating the recovery of marine coastal ecosystems is a global challenge that has been attempted on many systems around the world. Restoration efforts have shown varying levels of success at localized-scales, but developing techniques for large-scale application are still in their nascent stage for many systems. For seagrass meadows and marsh p...

Accelerating coral reef restoration is a global challenge that has been attempted around the world. Previous attempts show varying levels of success at localized‐scales, but comparisons of cost and benefits to evaluate large‐scale reef restoration approaches are lacking. Here, we compare two large‐scale restoration approaches: the harvesting, devel...

In 2010, Dutch dredging and marine contractor, Van Oord, launched a Coral Rehabilitation Initiative as part of its Sustainability and Marine Ingenuity agenda. The key challenge was to demonstrate that already proven small-scale coral breeding techniques can be scaled-up and applied in practice to promote environmental gain around marine infrastruct...

People living behind coastal dunes depend on the strength and resilience of dunes for their safety. Forecasts of hydrodynamic conditions and morphological change on a timescale of several days can provide essential information to protect lives and property. In order for forecasts to protect they need be relevant, accurate, provide lead time, and in...

Estimations of suspended sediment spreading are important for Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) for dredging and port construction works. Modelling outcomes rely on predictions of local (hydrodynamic) conditions, as well as on estimated suspended sediment sources that are used as model input. Becker et al. (2015) introduced a generic method f...

The Netherlands is home to two of the largest dredging contractors in the world. Both companies have seen a gradual growth over the last 100 years, alongside with a series of iconic hydraulic engineering projects in The Netherlands as well as abroad. Ambitious investment programmes in research and development and continuous equipment innovation hav...

The Netherlands has adopted a new, proactive approach to developing its extensive coastal and river works called 'building with nature'. Rather than simply minimising or mitigating the environmental impact of harbours, navigation channels, land reclamation and flood defences, the idea is to make use of the dynamics of the natural environment and pr...

Currently, coastal protection potential of ecosystems is estimated primarily as a function of its spatial extent and type. The degree to which coastal protection depends on aspects of biodiversity within these ecosystems is, however, less explored. Here, we provide a short summary of classical coastal protection strategies and the current state of...

Recent events like the Sumatra tsunami and Hurricane Katrina have reminded the world of the vulnerability of coastal areas to extreme events. Despite hydraulic engineering measures to minimize failure probability of coastal defence structures, a probability of failure, albeit small, remains. To assist local authorities and the population in their r...

Extreme coastal storms have a destructive impact on coastal areas and directly affect people living in the coastal zone, being this emphasized by recent events (e.g. Katrina, Xynthia) which reminded the world of the vulnerability of coastal areas. The economic constraints and the increasing vulnerability of coastal areas (due to sea level rise and...