Future Utilization and Optimal Investment Strategy for Inland Waterways: New Model from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to Assist Policy Makers

For nearly three decades, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) has been measuring incremental system navigation transportation costs for proposed infrastructure investments in search of the National Economic Development (NED) plan: local optimization in a system-level evaluation. The increasingly complex and sophisticated analysis requires the development of additional modeling modules. The traditional analysis assumed a most-likely traffic forecast and a set investment timing. Cost-benefit analyses on various alternatives were compared to determine the without-project condition and the recommended with-project NED plan. Sensitivity analyses of traffic forecasts and investment timing were done on the with-project plan. The second generation of analysis factored in the impacts of scheduled chamber closure differences between alternatives, and the third generation of analysis factored in the impacts of unscheduled ones. The goal is to be able to optimize investments simultaneously across a system (not just investments at one site) under a series of forecast scenarios while capturing structural reliability differences (scheduled and unscheduled closures). As the demands of the analysis increased, there was a need to consolidate and dynamically link the various models and techniques developed over the years and to develop new techniques to simultaneously manage investment permutations and automatically select optimal investment plans; the desire was to perform system optimization in a system-level evaluation. The innovative analysis techniques and relational database management structure of the new Ohio River Navigation Investment Model are introduced, as is a set of flexible, integrated analysis modules that move the Corps closer to these ideals.