176 Now NavPortal provides clarity. It affords each corps district a current view of its stretch, along with the entire river. When there’s little time to gather data and conduct in-depth analysis, NavPortal delivers ongoing awareness. It empowers staff to identify problems and plan fixes before channels clog. Dealing with Volatility The corps’s project engineers have a tough job to understand channel depths and sediment buildup. In the midst of drought, for instance, intermittent rains can make any stretch of the river viable for barges one day and impassable the next. “Trying to chase the bottlenecks in a system like that is a real challenge,” Mitchell said. Some veteran project engineers know intuitively how the river will change. But with more volatile weather because of shifting climate patterns, river behavior can defy even the sharpest instincts. And for novice engineers, surprising shifts over just a few years have set no reliable patterns. NavPortal reveals the dynamic nature of the situation. “Now we have a digital twin to lay it all out for them,” Mitchell said. The portal’s mix of map visualizations, charts, and graphs provides a holistic view of navigation projects and alternatives. “The idea is to make all the data accessible and understandable,” said Josh Pritchard, a GIS and NavPortal manager for the USACE Mobile, Alabama, district office. This comprehensive resource proves crucial as channel blockages can multiply quickly, with one or two choke points turning into dozens across many states. It gives engineers insight into current and historical patterns, plus predictions about what’s likely to happen. “NavPortal lets us see trends through time,” Mitchell said. “We can plot time series charts at particular locations where we’ve seen trouble before. And we can anticipate seasonal shoaling events that tend to create trouble.” Awareness Lowers Costs The corps spends roughly $1.5 billion each year on its hundreds of maintenance dredging projects across the country. Shippers want greater depth at ports to carry more cargo per voyage. Producers need open Zooming in, NavPortal users can see channel surveys and cross sections to see where obstructions are building. The ability to view current vessel traffic and depth data creates a living map that can be queried to provide new levels of awareness about volatile parameters.
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