In countries where rivers are navigable, inland navigation offers an alternative for freight transport by road or rail. Inland navigation has the advantages of low costs for operators, reliability of journey times, low use of energy per ton kilometre, and high safety. To enable this mode of transport though, high investments are needed, for example, in canals, locks and movable bridges. The planning or these investments relies on long-term forecasts of transport demand and the analysis of the corresponding vessel movements over the waterway network. The Transport Research Centre of the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works, and Water Management has commissioned the development of such a model to a consortium consisting of partners that are responsible for respectively model design (TU Delft), software implementation (QQQ), GIS integration (ESRI), collection (NEA) and project management and integration (TNO-Inro). The present paper aims to give an overview of the current state of the model design part, and particularly focuses on the route enumeration component of the model.
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