Dredging a New Harbour Site in the Port of Rotterdam
Type:
Presented during:
WODCON XVIII - 2007 Orlando, Florida, USA
Authors:
Zwakhals
Abstract: coastline and at the estuary of the River Rhine and Maas, large amounts of sediments and sand have to be removed to create the necessary depth. New and deep harbour basins are needed for a new generation of ships. The container business is booming, new and large container terminals sites have to be constructed in short time. Simultaneous new plans for a large extension of the harbour site are ready for construction, millions of m3 of sand are needed to construct these reclamation. Rules and new regulations prevent any start of this new project.
At the last open space in the existing harbour area a new key wall is under construction for the new generation container vessels. Before 2009 a total of 22 million m3 sand has to be dredged. Making work with work and placing the out coming sand on the place of the forthcoming harbour extension would be the easiest and cheapest way, but for now this is not yet possible. The challenge for the project “Dredging a new harbour site” is now to distribute a total amount of 22 million m3 of salt sand in 3 years. A large amount in a market which needs only 3.5 m3 sand a year.
This paper describes the struggle of dredging in a time schedule to complete the new harbour site and find a useful place for re-use of the dredged material in the direct surroundings.
Keywords: Dredging, flexibility, optimisation, economics