Minimising harbour siltation—findings of PIANC Working Group 43

Abstract

Modern trends, increases in ship size, improved cargo handling capability, sea level rise and erosion threats to low-lying land, undesirable attributes of certain traditional mud dredging and disposal practices, coupled with pressure from environmental legislation, are all driving a need to manage coastal waters and fine sediment in a more sophisticated manner. Wide-ranging review of world “best practice” has highlighted five fully evolved northwest European generic sediment management systems (SMS) to address these challenges. These are being applied to universally recurring types of port facilities: impounded docks, lock entrances, semi-enclosed basins, channels and fairways. They are applicable to large and small, existing and new facilities in rivers, estuaries, open sea coasts, even in some cases to lakes. They can be passive or active. The functioning of each of these five is explained with comment on economic benefit. What emerges strongly is that the applied academic disciplines of physical and chemical oceanography, plus marine microbiology, are being drawn together to supplement or replace traditional maritime engineering. Following on from a Permanent International Association of Navigation Congresses review, these technologies are spreading beyond the northwest European conception area, as well as beginning to be adopted by international dredging companies. The complexity, scale of potential benefit, numbers of poorly understood issues highlighted and embryonic way these are beginning to spread all suggest that this is potentially an important area for future scientific endeavour.