IN THE NEWS

From SmartPort To Scalable Waterway Intelligence

Apr 18, 2025


In December 2022, The Waterways Journal covered The Water Institute’s crowdsourced bathymetry (CSB) and modeling efforts under its SmartPort project—an effort to provide both near real-time and forecast channel conditions. That effort officially concluded in mid-2024, but it laid the foundation for something bigger.

Building on SmartPort’s success in the lowermost Mississippi River, The Water Institute has since expanded its mission, shifting from a focused pilot program to create a scalable effort that can provide comprehensive and timely assessments of available draft and bed elevation conditions throughout the nation’s inland waterway system. Read the full article here.

Crowdsourced bathymetric surface showing bed elevation in meters (NAVD88) in the New Orleans area, derived from 14 days of aggregated data. Surface generated April 13, 2025, during a time of relatively high water on the Mississippi River.