In the 25 years of existence, the offshore wind market has developed on many aspects. Among others, the dimension of the turbines increased by a factor 15 and the distance to shore increased by a factor of 50. The developments of the offshore wind farms increase the requirements for the installation vessels and as a consequence the present day rates can be up to $300.000. The global potential of the offshore wind market by the year 2030 is forecasted to be 60 GW for Europe and 22GW for the US Atlantic coast. The developments in the market, lead to demands during the construction of offshore wind turbines. The construction phase became more demanding over the years, while the logistical strategy of sailing back and forth to the offshore wind farm with a jack-up vessel, is similar as applied in 1991. The six demands can be fulfilled by performing four required activities at the offshore port. The potential of seven support structures that fulfil the boundary conditions for the offshore port are determined. Important boundary conditions are a maximum vertical load of 12.600 ton, suitability in a water depth range between 30 and 50 meter and a minimum surface area of 17.500 m2. Besides boundary conditions that have to be fulfilled, there are also maximum allowed conditions that determine the workability of a port concept. For a floating port concept the motion response is the leading workability condition. Based on the mobility, motion response and a cost indication, three port concepts are selected. These port concepts are a single barge, a single jack-up barge and a combination of a small jack-up barge and a single barge. The current logistical strategy for construction of an offshore wind farm is compared to various logistical concepts that include an offshore port. The logistical concept with a feeder vessel that sails from the onshore to the offshore port and an installation vessel that sails between the offshore port and the wind farm has the highest potential saving. Taking into account the assumptions made throughout this research, for each executed project by the offshore port the savings are expected to be €23.000.000. These savings consist of a sooner generation of energy and by savings on the construction of an offshore wind farm. The discounted cash flows for the three port concepts shows a potential for the offshore port concept. The net present value of the three offshore port concepts deviates between 52 and 216 million euro. The financial results are most sensitive to the ratio between wind farm capacity and the turbine capacity, also the market share that is interest in applying the offshore port and the day rate of the vessels. When the offshore wind market follows the tendency of developments of the last years, there is a market potential for an offshore port concept to reduce the construction costs. The main recommendations are to analyse the interest of potential port owners, perform a motion response into more detail and validate the financial assumptions.

The inland ports play an important role in the Dutch transport system, but it will undergo changes as a result of the societal changes in demand for services and goods and the changes in hydraulic conditions. The inland port has to adapt to these developments in order to reduce the threats and to increase the opportunities, but this requires adaptations to the current infrastructure or services. It is preferred to know the opportunities and threats beforehand, so that the inland port can already adapt to these projected changes ahead of time. This research focussed on the development of a method to assess the future-proofness of a Dutch inland port in the period up to 2050, result in the following main research question: What method can be provided to assess the future-proofness of an inland port in The Netherlands until 2050 with regard to the current port activities? The first step of this research was focussed on defining future-proofness of an inland port. An investigation into literature on the definition of future-proofness resulted in the following definition of the future-proof inland port: A future-proof inland port remains useful and successful in the transfer of goods, the storage of goods and facilitating industrial processes for the production of cargo in the future and is flexible enough in port services and infrastructure to deal with potential changes. Subsequently, the activities of various inland port were analysed, resulting in thirteen main port activities in the inland port. In combination with the identified port indicators, the port characteristics of each inland port can be determined. In the final step before the set-up of the method, more insights is obtained about the uncertainties in long-term developments and the related methods to deal with these uncertainties. In the end, it was found out that trend-based narratives can be used for this assessment, because this new method reflects the threats and opportunities for different port activities for specific inland ports. The obtained knowledge about future-proofness, the port activities and the uncertainties in long-term developments were used to set-up of a method to assess the future-proofness of the inland port, which exists of four different parts:•Part 1: Determination of the current inland port’s strengths & weaknesses (port characteristics)•Part 2: Determination of the port specific opportunities and threats (impacts)•Part 3: Determination of the flexibility of the specific inland port•Part 4: Assessment of the future-proofness of the specific inland port The applicability of this method was demonstrated through three case studies, in which the future-proofness of three existing inland ports is assessed. These case studies were the inland ports of Bergen op Zoom, Oosterhout and Wageningen. For these three case studies, the inland port of Wageningen seems very future-proof. It scores good on the current port characteristics, the impacts and the flexibility. The other two inland ports are still considered to be future-proof, although they might face some (minor) challenges in order to become future-proof. Overall, it is concluded that the generated method can be used to assess the future-proofness of the inland ports. It presents a first insight in the degree of future-proofness of the inland ports and can be used as a starting point to improve the performance of the inland port in the future and thereby becoming future-proof.

Mercurius Shipping Group invested in two container-crane vessels which are able to load and unload cargo to and from its holds. Due to their unique feature, the crane, failure of the vessels results in large financial consequences. Previous experience showed that these costs could be mitigated with easily/timely available spare-parts. The main aim of this study was to increase the reliability of Mercurius Shipping Group's container-crane vessel MKS Mercurius by proposing an optimized spare-part inventory. Subsequently, by doing so, reducing the total costs of operating and maintaining the vessel and ensuring profit maximization for MSG. Cost models have been developed to quantify the reduction in financial risk of failures, by having spare-parts directly available, and to determine the costs of keeping a spare-part inventory. As a result a list of spare-parts is proposed based on a comparison between the reduced failure impact/costs (benefit), with a spare-part in inventory, and the corresponding annual inventory costs. The results showed that a cost-effective improvement to vessel reliability, due to a decrease in vessel downtime, can be achieved with direct availabiltiy of spare-parts kept in inventory. Currently equipped with two container-crane vessel the optimum inventory consists of 13 components, requiring an investment of €50,000 and leading to an improvement to the vessels financial performance of €13,000 per year. In case MSG decides to relocate one of the container-crane vessels, the impact of failure increases. In this case the recommended inventory should be expanded to 28 components, requiring an investment of €137,000 and leading to an improvement to the vessels financial performance of €55,000 per year.

Zutphen is a city in the Netherlands, located along the IJssel River and the nautical access of the Twentekanaal. Despite its beneficial location, Zutphen barely uses the inland waterways for freight transport. This lead to the objective of this thesis: To provide insight how a viable inland waterway terminal be realized in Zutphen’s business park De Mars to improve its freight connection.
After analysing the regional and local infrastructure and transport flows, it was found that the best opportunities arise for the development of an intermodal inland waterway transport (IWT) connection, including an inland container terminal in Zutphen. A reliable intermodal transport service can only be realized if the terminal operator has access to a sufficient and constant flow of cargo volumes to be transported. Cargo can only be attracted if shippers are willing to make a modal change.

A framework consisting of several analyses was presented to assess the feasibility of an inland container terminal in Zutphen. Based on input from these analyses, three technical designs of proposed terminal solutions were worked out. A terminal solution is considered to be feasible if a business can be found for a private investor. For each of these alternatives, a financial assessment was worked out to determine whether a business case can be found. Based on the results of the financial assessment, a recommendation is given to the municipality.

The inland waters of Ghana have a considerable potential for the operation of inland water transport (IWT) services. These services could be part of a multimodal transport corridor, to connect the northern regions and the northern landlocked countries with the industrial southern part of the country, which also includes the port of Tema, one of the gateways of the landlocked countries. However, despite the many advantages of IWT, these waters are currently barely used for freight transportation. The absence of a high quality IWT service is mainly unfortunate, as Ghana suffers from the consequences of the unilateral road transport market: the many trucks leads to congestions, traffic hazards and long (and unreliable) transport times. Besides this, the freight transportation by road is rather expensive.
An IWT service on the Ghanaian inland waters could be able to improve the cost and time performances of the Ghanaian transit corridor.
The Ghanaian inland waters are mainly formed by Lake Volta and the upstream Volta Rivers. The water levels of these waters are subject to the local climate, which results in (very) low water levels during the dry season (from November to July). The water levels of Lake Volta allow year round navigation, but that does not hold for the Volta Rivers. In fact, Buipe Port, along the Black Volta, is probably the most upstream location that can be reached for most part of the year, while a year round accessibility can be guaranteed after dredging a shoal, a bit downstream of the port.
The potential container market for the IWT service is quite small, being about 8,000 TEUs per year. Nearly all these containers are currently transported by road from Tema Port to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Due to the congestions and (bad) conditions of roads and trucks, the northbound journey (about 1,000 km) takes about four days. The corresponding price for transport is also very high, being about USD 2,600 for a 20 ft. container. The only commercial IWT service at Lake Volta, is not able to deliver better performances, due to bad and inappropriate equipment.
The feasibility of three different IWT services is investigated: roll-on/roll-off of truck/trailer combinations or roll trailers on the one hand, and lift-on/lift-off of containers on the other hand. All the alternatives are based on the concept of barges being pushed by push tugs, as this is the most promising concept from a financial point of view.
It can be concluded that the potential transit container market of 8,000 TEU/year, for which the IWT service has to compete for, is too small to result in a profitable service. However, when relocating the transit traffic (clearance) procedures from Tema Port to Buipe Port, the yearly container throughput via Lake Volta will be much higher, making an IWT service viable and profitable. Besides, this relocation will result in extra space in the port of Tema, and can result in more efficient clearance procedures, thereby decreasing the total door-to-door time of transit traffic.