Goals

The Dennie Lockefeer Chair focuses on three pillars: research, education and scientific services in inland shipping.

Initially, the chair consists of a PhD in Inland Navigation. In concrete terms, the chair is looking for 'a future vision for inland shipping'. This falls under the first pillar: 'Research'.

The research has four goals:

1. analyse whether new (terminal) capacity can contribute to smoother throughput planning for inland navigation as well as more efficient use of inland navigation transhipment capacity,
2. defining the bottlenecks in the missing integration link between deepsea/inland terminal and warehouse,
3. developing efficient and effective indicators/tools for inland navigation, 
4. examining the relationship normal ROI - positive cash flow - necessary investments.

In the field of 'Education', the Dennie Lockefeer Chair awards an annual award for the best thesis concerning inland shipping. We also award a biennial fee for the Antwerp Inland Navigation School.

A series of lectures fall under the third pillar 'Scientific services'. The Dennie Lockefeer Chair is organizing an annual lecture linked to inland shipping for the coming academic years. To this end, all expertise from the Chair will be brought together, as well as students / young employees will be involved and enthusiastic about inland shipping.

The quality assurance has been done by the scientific committee: prof. dr. Christa Sys, prof. dr. Thierry Vanelslander, prof. dr. Ann Verhetsel