Impact of recent changes in river management on maintenance dredging

Over the last centuries, Dutch rivers such as the Rhine have been heavily trained for the purpose of the safe discharge of water, sediment and ice, and navigability. After the notorious flood events of 1993 and 1995 along the Rhine, new large-scale river works were initiated, such as the Room for the River (RfR) programme, to increase flood conveyance capacity. For a better navigation, in 2006 the minimum guaranteed depth on the Waal has been raised from 2.50 m to 2.80 m. It is inevitable that the measures of the large-scale works and changes in the minimum guaranteed depth will influence the morphology of the river and the dredging effort. Three schematisations are distinguished in this research, namely maintenance dredging in the situation with a minimum guaranteed depth of 2.5 m, the situation with a minimum guaranteed depth of 2.8 m, and the situation after the implementation of the Room for the River programme. The aim of this research is to determine the impacts of the increase in the minimum guaranteed depth and the Room for the River programme on the maintenance dredging in the river Waal using the deterministic approach and a stochastic approach.