Crowdsourced Bathymetry's Role in a Data Fusion Approach to Measuring Demand for Waterway Depth

Abstract: The US Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for maintaining more than 40,000 km (25,000 mi) of navigable waterways in the U.S. that provide access to hundreds of ports across the country. The agency uses a suite of legacy metrics, some of which have been in use for over a century, to prioritize maintenance activities and allocate maintenance funds to support those activities. These legacy metrics paint an incomplete picture of demand for the channel depth service that the Army Corps provides annually through its $1.5B dredging program.

The authors have recently demonstrated a new capability to model the underkeel clearance of vessels using a data fusion approach with historic data archives. This capability allows the USACE to measure the demand signal for the depth service it provides, which is necessary for efficient allocation of resources. Underkeel clearance based metrics, including a vessel encroachment parameter and a volume to dredge parameter pinpoint where and how much accumulated sediment impedes the movement of vessels on US Army Corps managed waterways. These encroaching volumes can be contextualized with dredging activity records derived from the Army Corps dredging program to improve alignment between demand and supply.

The methodology has provided compelling insights including multiple order of magnitude cost differences for unique vessel transits at different locations and an alternative view of what “efficient” projects look like. The methodology is currently being implemented in a cloud-based analytics platform to enable the Army Corps’ waterway managers to achieve substantial potential savings by rebalancing waterway maintenance effort.

As this capability matures, crowdsourced bathymetry shows promise as a technology that could enable the Army Corps to achieve a near real time underkeel clearance measurement capability. By integrating the crowdsourced bathymetry concept with other technology systems currently in use this capability would further improve the Corp's ability to manage its waterway portfolio and waterway safety for the mariner.

This paper will 1) outline the emerging USACE data fusion approach to measuring underkeel clearance and associated key performance indicators, 2) explain how underkeel clearance data improves waterway management decision making, and 3) show the crowdsourced bathymetry concept and how it can be used with other data mining techniques to improve waterway management.

How does this project / topic contribute to the advancement of the industry and profession?: This capability is ultimately a data-driven technology that aims to target maintenance dredging activity where it is most needed based on the demand signal generated by waterway users. It does this in an objective, repeatable, and transparent way while improving waterway function for the most users. As the rational allocation of scarce maintenance funding is improved by this capability, dredging should be able to expand to additional ports as unproductive dredging is reduced across the portfolio of managed waterways.

Does the project / topic implement new and innovative techniques, materials, technologies, and delivery methods?: Yes, our methodology uses a cloud-based geospatial infrastructure for the analysis of waterway maintenance activity across the portfolio at the reach level. Measurement of hundreds of thousands of individual transits occurs at the minute timescale with 25 m2 (269 ft2) resolution. Results are flexibly aggregated to a variety of time (e.g. monthly, annually) and geographic (e.g. individual port, region) scales.

What was the most challenging aspect of your project / topic and how did you handle it to ensure success?: The most technically challenging aspect of this project was overcoming the sheer size of the portfolio and the number of measurements required to achieve a meaningful assessment of the dredging program as a whole. This was overcome by implementing modern data analytics technologies in a cloud based environment.

Who is the target audience for this paper?: The target audience for this paper is any waterway stakeholder interested in maximizing the achievable performance of waterway management by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.