Finnish Waterway Association’s traditional Winter Seminar

Finnish Waterway Association’s traditional winter seminar in Lappeenranta addressed the Saimaa Canal operating development opportunities, new technologies as well as extensive inland waterway projects in the Stockholm area. The future prospects of inland waterway transport were pointed out within a panel discussion.The event was the size of about 80 interested listeners.

Tero Sikiö, Head of the Inland Waterways unit of the Finnish Transport Agency, presented the results of their study. It focused on possible means to increase the size of vessels in the Saimaa Canal.

Worldwide interest in smart inland waterway infrastructure was taken into account in SeaHow´s Sales Director Kari Pohjola speech. He presented the smart buoys that are equipped with sensors and detectors that collect information and can monitor e.g. wave, water levels, flow directions, the oxygen content of the water, blue-green algae degrees, as well as possible oil leaks.

Joakim Sjöblom from PBI Research presented a MEGAUNIT concept that is based on a new type of large transport unit and transporting dry bulk freighter.

Possibilities of LNG use in inland waterway transportation were presented by Jouni Bedda, ScanGas Ltd.

With the title "Inland waterways developing fast in Sweden - near future plans", Johan Axio, Regionchef of the Swedish Maritime Administration, presented some of the Swedish development projects.

 Johan Lantz, CEO, Avatar Logistics AB, introduced a fuel distribution project, which involves the Swedish Maritime Administration, City of Stockholm, Södertälje harbour and the Swedish Transport Administration.

International cooperation in developing the inland waterways was declared by the EMMA project, which was presented by Petri Jalkanen, Lahti Regional Development LADEC Ltd. This 3-year project is funded by EU's Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme. There are in total 21 partners from 5 Baltic Sea Region countries and over 40 associated partners. Participants from Finland are the Regional Council of North Karelia, the Lahti Regional Development LADEC Ltd. and the Finnish Waterway Association.

For more information and materials used on this conference, please visit: http://www.vesitiet.org/#!aineistoja-2014-/cs5h.