SHIP WAVE EFFECTS IN TIDAL WATERWAYS: PERSPECTIVES FROM AN INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP

Coastal and estuarine waterbodies have always been important to the socio-economic development of societies, not least due to their provision of access to world trade. The movement of ships through water is associated with the generation of water surface disturbances which can largely be described by two distinct wave systems with long-period and short-period components, respectively; both wave systems can propagate to the waterway edges where they interact with the natural and built environment (e.g., Maynord 2004), often to adverse effect. The magnitude and frequency of detrimental impacts is becoming ever more evident in estuarine and coastal waterways around the world. The workshop “ShipWave 2023”, held in Hamburg, Germany on 21-23 March 2023 explored the wide range of diverse effects on bank-side infrastructural, environmental and socio- economical assets and the arising use conflicts as well as current and future strategies for the management of ship wave impacts based on the collaborative expertise of academics, practitioners and policymakers from various backgrounds and countries around the world. The novelty of the work lies in the geographical and cultural diversity of problem descriptions on this type of loading in estuaries and coastal waters that were compiled and contrasted.