Dutch and American waterway development: identification and classification of tools for value creation

Waterways can serve society in a variety of ways. However, authorities responsible for maintenance and development of waterways often have a sectoral focus. They strive for cost efficient solutions within their restricted scope; broader development of socio-economic value receives little attention. This can be seen in e.g. the Netherlands and the USA. Both countries have strong national authorities responsible for the navigation function of waterways. The societal call for broader optimization is recognized, but a systemized response to this call is lacking. Nevertheless both authorities make attempts towards increasing the socio-economic value of their capital waterway projects by deploying tools for broader optimization. Six recent cases, in which such attempts were made, are studied with the aim of identifying and classifying the tools deployed. Identification and classification is needed to evaluate where gaps and opportunities lie for more systemized responses. From these cases a total of 15 tools are identified which stimulated broad optimization. These tools are classified by identifying the transaction characteristics associated with these tools. These characteristics can relate to cost, benefits or value capturing and can be of informative, coordinative or legislative nature. The results show overlaps and voids in the domains these tools address. For practitioners the results can be helpful to navigate through the planning and implementation phase of waterway projects. More broadly the study shows that in the waterway sector, a sector in need for adaptation and renewal, the application of a variety of mixes of governance is an emerging issue

Value creation in capital waterway projects: Application of a transaction cost and transaction benefit framework for the Miami River and the New Orleans Inner Harbour Navigation Canal

Waterways have many more ties with society than as a medium for the transportation of goods alone. Waterway systems offer society many kinds of socio-economic value. Waterway authorities responsible for management and (re)development need to optimize the public benefits for the investments made. However, due to the many trade-offs in the system these agencies have multiple options for achieving this goal. Because they can invest resources in a great many different ways, they need a way to calculate the efficiency of the decisions they make. Transaction cost theory, and the analysis that goes with it, has emerged as an important means of justifying efficiency decisions in the economic arena. To improve our understanding of the value-creating and coordination problems for waterway authorities, such a framework is applied to this sector. This paper describes the findings for two cases, which reflect two common multi trade-off situations for waterway (re)development. Our first case study focuses on the Miami River, an urban revitalized waterway. The second case describes the Inner Harbour Navigation Canal in New Orleans, a canal and lock in an industrialized zone, in need of an upgrade to keep pace with market developments. The transaction cost framework appears to be useful in exposing a wide variety of value-creating opportunities and the resistances that come with it. These insights can offer infrastructure managers guidance on how to seize these opportunities

Do we need to rethink our waterways? Values of ageing waterways in current and future society

In the past canals were developed, and some rivers were heavily altered, driven by the need for good transportation infrastructure. Major investments were made in navigation locks, weirs and artificial embankments, and many of these assets are now reaching the end of their technical lifetime. Since then the concept of integrated water resource management (IWRM) emerged as a concept to manage and develop water-bodies in general. Two pressing problems arise from these developments: (1) major reinvestment is needed in order to maintain the transportation function of these waterways, and (2), it is not clear how the implementation of the concept of IWRM can be brought into harmony with such reinvestment. This paper aims to illustrate the problems in capital-intensive parts of waterway systems, and argues for exploring value-driven solutions that rely on the inclusion of multiple values, thus solving both funding problems and stakeholder conflicts. The focus on value in cooperative strategies is key to defining viable implementation strategies for waterway projects

Waterways – ways of value: Planning for redevelopment of an ageing system in modern society

Historically, many western countries developed networks of navigable waterways to serve their transportation needs. Today these networks face a threefold challenge: assets like navigation locks, weirs and bridges are ageing, climate change influences operational circumstances, and society calls for consideration of the broader values waterways can bring. These issues induce an urgent need to redevelop this type of public infrastructure, where redevelopment should not only fit the contemporary transportation needs, but just as well those broader values like recreation, nature, aesthetics, flood-protection, irrigation and so on. This study focuses on this intent and aims at providing practical guidance to maximize societal value. A well-known framework to optimize value propositions in the private sector is adapted for the public sector and used in six American and Dutch case studies. The findings show that cooperation between all kinds of actors is crucial to build value, that such cooperation relies on synergy, and that synergy is built according to specific rules. For practical guidance this process is detailed following a five-step approach. More in general three fields for improvement of current practice are identified: aligning policy ambitions with project management incentives, use of platforms for brokering of interests, and reduction of frictions in cooperation to stimulate synergy. The results are of use in the infrastructure sector in general, and specifically for the redevelopment of ageing waterways in today’s society

Renewing infrastructure networks: new challenge, new approach?

Western countries are increasingly confronted with redeveloping transportation infrastructure systems. From a Large Technical System (LTS) perspective, this marks a new phase for infrastructure systems and according new policies. This article, on the one hand, reflects on the development of infrastructure policies and, on the other hand, explores new policy directions. A policy analysis of the Dutch national inland waterway system is put central, as it is a topical example of an aging infrastructure network. Central in the analysis is the idea of congruence – reflected in ‘matches’ or ‘mismatches’ – between the technical system, i.e. physical assets, and the social system, i.e. institutions and policies. LTS approaches typically distinguish four succeeding phases: establishment, expansion, maturity and renewal. The system’s state in each phase has an own geographical scale, time horizon and functionality. Our analysis demonstrates that the congruence in the inland waterway system has changed considerably. In the establishment phase, the Dutch inland waterway network was strongly regionally oriented. During the 20th Century, the network has heavily expanded. Novel techniques and a strong, central coordinative authority contributed to this, changing the focus from regional linkages to the complete network. From the 1970s, a more integrative approach emerged, in which transportation aims were combined with ecological and spatial issues. This phase of maturity focused particularly on the quality of the network, instead of the quantity. Since 2010, the question is arising how to deal with aging network components. New pathways by governmental agencies that are being explored consider a longer time horizon, incorporating uncertainties, and question the functionality of the network. Yet, current policies reflect this only to a limited extent. Consequently, the move towards a phase of renewal seems to create a potential mismatch between the state of the infrastructure and its policies

Comprehensive framework on asset management of transportation networks and resilience planning

This paper aims to provide proper guidelines for supporting decision-making and prioritization of infrastructure investments and actions. It is based on a framework for asset management of transportation networks. The paper emphasizes the enhancement of resilience of the transport systems, covering multimodal network aspects. The proposed framework promotes a fully functional transport network, optimizing processes at a cross modal and cross border level. Guidance is provided on how to enrich and support the individual, institutional and political action arenas. The main effort is to develop synergies at a cross border and cross modal level and for this reason cooperative solutions offering mutual gain are promoted. Overall, the guidelines ensure the effective use of the generic framework, which could constitute the basis for asset management of National Infrastructure Agencies considering also resilience, as well as regional planning objectives, social factors and criteria

Real time non-coherent synchronization method in 6-10.6 GHz IR-UWB demonstrator chipset

\u3cp\u3eA theoretical model for non-coherent start-of-frame-delimiter (SFD) detection in IEEE 802.15.4a is presented and closed form solutions for SFD threshold and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimation are derived. The derived results are implemented in an impulse radio ultra wide band (IR-UWB) demonstrator operating in the 6-10.6 GHz UWB band. The demonstrator is designed for low power operation (in the mW range for combined digital base band (DBB) & radio frequency (RF)). The transmitter (TX) RF is duty cycled at pulse level and the receiver (RX) RF is switched to pulse level duty cycling when possible. Moreover, digital TX and RX resources are only switched on when needed. Measurement results are in close agreement with the derived closed form solutions.\u3c/p\u3

A Low-Power 6-to-9GHz IEEE 802.15.4a/4z Compliant IR-UWB Transceiver with Pulse Pre-Emphasis Achieving High ToA Precision

This work presents an IEEE 802.15.4a/4z compliant IR-UWB transceiver for high-precision ranging. By virtue of the proposed digital deserialization-serialization, the TX can generate the Inter-Symbol-Interference (ISI) free IEEE 802.15.4a/4z packet. The proposed analog Finite Impulse Response (FIR)-based TX pre-emphasis improves 3.5× Time of Arrival (ToA) measurement precision without substantial power overhead and fulfills the spectrum requirement of the standard and the worldwide UWB regulations. The presented transceiver consumes 8.7 mW in TX mode and 21 mW in RX mode. IEEEFALS