Pilot Project Navigation with Nature®: a CoVadem application for the Chindwin River, Myanmar

Short general project overview

Myanmar faces issues to utilise their river system for inland waterway transport since navigation is unsafe and many areas are less accessible for longer periods throughout the year. Most of the country’s larger rivers are characterised by a dynamic meandering and braiding nature. This entails fast and unpredictable fairway channel migrations, which can shift hundreds of meters within one dry and wet season. This is mainly due to intense precipitation during the monsoon period, followed by a very dry season, with high water levels during the monsoon and very low water levels during the dry season and water level differences up to 10m. Navigation is significantly hampered because of these constantly changing conditions and limited river training works, ultimately risking (fatal) accidents by grounding vessels. Navigation with Nature® offers a commercial solution to this problem, by ensuring continuous safe navigation with the use of the CoVadem (Cooperative Navigation Depth Measurement) technology, applied to vessels operating on the river. It delivers safe and optimal routing for inland waterway transport along highly dynamic rivers by displaying present and forecasted water depths in real-time.
The forecast is made available by means of a mobile application that can be accessed by fleet operators and captains during operations. Such solution minimises the need for river training works (e.g. groynes or dredging) and aids to navigation (e.g. buoys), which are very costly, particularly in a dynamic river. It enables building with nature concepts to be employed and reduces the need for regular maintenance as part of an overall integrated approach of increasing smooth, cost effective and safe navigation.
This solution is directly beneficial to both the fleet operators and river managers in Myanmar. Fleet operators can reduce their transport costs and river managers can reduce the maintenance costs as well as achieve their strategic target of improving navigation. The river managers are represented by the departments Directorate of Water Resources and Improvement of River Systems (DWIR) and Inland Water Transport (IWT), which is part of the Ministry of Transport of Myanmar. DWIR and IWT are responsible for waterway management, operations and associated objectives in Myanmar and have clearly expressed their wish to urgently improve navigability on Myanmar’s rivers, including the Chindwin River. Besides providing safe and accessible waterways, the solution also strengthens transport corridors in the region and reduces fuel consumption, ultimately resulting in a positive impact on regional economic development and contributes to a healthy environment.
The project area is a 432 km river stretch between Hkamti to Maolike along the Chindwin River which has high priority indicated by the fleet operators. The pilot project consists of technical and commercial activities. The technical activities are aimed at implementing and operating the service (including hardware and software) on the Chindwin River to obtain a fine-tuned and calibrated running system. During the project, up to 10 vessels, from those already operating on the river, will be equipped with the CoVadem technology. Data collection will start right from the start of the pilot. These vessels will measure water depth while sailing the defined stretch, the data will be transmitted to a centralized server. On this server the data will be used to update the relevant navigational information, which all the beneficiaries get in return, in real-time, on their smartphone or display via a mobile application. The commercial activities are focussed on validating the business model, willingness to pay and associated payment system. The pilot will be finalized with an evaluation of the results against qualitative and quantitative indicators, in order to come to an overall judgement and proof of concept, including next steps for up-scaling.
The main result of this pilot is a demonstration of the running digital service and commercial business model in the physical and institutional setting of the Chindwin River to facilitate upscaling of the service. It is expected that this pilot significantly increases safety levels and reduce maintenance cost for navigation and accessibility between Hkamti to Maolike.

Navigation with Nature® allows for upscaling in two ways:

1. different navigation routes, as the technology is independent from the geographic location and
2. increasing the number of ships along the same navigation route as the service can be upgraded to accommodate more vessels.

Proof of concept of this pilot for the Chindwin River allows it to be upscaled to the entire waterway system in Myanmar. Implementation of this system on the full stretch of river from Yangon, up to Mandalay and further upstream fits directly into the Nationwide Transport Masterplan of the Ministry of Transport where it wants to improve navigation on the Ayeyarwady and Chindwin rivers. Beyond Myanmar, the platform can be scaled up and/or replicated to other highly dynamic rivers in the world, such as those e.g. in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Nigeria and Vietnam.