Inland Waterways

Inland waterways are the infrastructures used to transport goods and passengers on rivers (free-flowing or with reservoirs), artificial canals or bodies of water.

River transport is meeting with renewed interest, due to growing awareness of the saturation of road transport and growing concern for environmental protection. This mode of transport is the most energy-efficient, thanks to the massification it achieves. Most often used in an intermodal context, it plays a significant economic role in countries where river geography is favorable, notably in large countries such as the United States, China and Germany. Its fast-growing role in container transport has enabled it to expand the range of goods it carries.

This context is driving the modernization of existing waterways and the construction of new infrastructures, in Europe and around the world, with the different types of development possible: free-flow for rivers with high flow and low gradient, by creating river reservoirs or by creating artificial canals, particularly when two valleys need to be joined together.

The overall design of a waterway depends on the maximum size vessel or convoy that can use it: the project vessel or river unit.

The other key factor in design is hydraulics. The water resource determines the low-water level for free-flowing rivers, and the supply of water to locks for rivers with reservoirs, and to reaches for artificial canals.

The dimensioning of each of the major structures that make up a waterway, such as locks, mobile dams and channels, includes a strong hydraulic component and calls on civil engineering and electromechanical techniques.

River ports, whether simple riverbank developments or large multi-purpose ports, are essential complements to a waterway project.

The methods used to manage, operate and monitor navigation infrastructures have been thoroughly modernized thanks to advances in information and telecommunication systems.