This month we are celebrating the 125th anniversary of the world’s most frequented artificial waterway. Read about the engineering feat, the historical background of construction, and its commercial significance.
It all began with a trick. The Kiel Canal would never have been built if Bismarck hadn’t exploited the first German Kaiser’s love of the navy to obtain permission to build a canal between the North Sea and the Baltic. 125 years after its completion and official opening on June 21, 1895, the Kiel Canal is still a vital transport link for international shipping and an important factor in North Germany’s economy.
At the end of July we were invited by the University of Stuttgart and the Institute of Transportation Research Stuttgart (which is part of Germany’s excellence cluster „simulation technology“) to take part in a workshop on maritime performance calculation on August 24, 2016. After several warm-up presentations, it was discussed how existing algorithms can be improved, in order to generate more accurate results and faster calculation times.
It could be noted, that further research for the improved performance and capacity in the calculation of shipping routes is needed. Main applications in particular apply for shearing and intersecting traffic. According to the participants, there is significant ongoing research, but the results cannot be applied in practice. At the end of the day, each participant was satisfied with the workshop and everyone agreed to work together on future development projects.
