Analysis to assess potential rivers for cargo transport in Indonesia

For a country with abundant river availability like Indonesia, a lot of remote rural areas rely on river transport as the only accessible choice. Meanwhile, river transport in Indonesia is relatively neglected where the number of river vessels and navigable rivers are continuously declined, modal share of river transport is very small, and river channels could not always be navigated. Therefore, it is very important for government or other planners to consider which river segment as priority in developing river transport. However, finding a proper and adequate method to assess and compare potential river is quite scarce, especially for cargo transport. This paper tries to propose and simulate a new method to asses and compare potential river segments. By using ArcGIS, river buffer zones were created with a distance of 500 m to 5 km from river bank. Therefore, based on land use map and planning policy documents, each segment will be analyse from navigational, economic, social and environment indicators such as dimensional and navigational constraints, population density and income, poverty rate, number of industry site, and existing endangered water ecosystems. Those indicators are compared to the length of river segment as useful indexes in order to assess the potential river segments. Analytic Hierarchy Process data from on-line questionnaire filled by 50 respondents is used to analyse opinions and preferences from related stakeholders such as government transport officers. From analysis, government and other planners could select and sort the urgent river segments for development. The results show that the rural river segment shoud be priority so the government must pay concious attention with more detailed analysis. However, each segment has its own advantage and disadvantage from different apsect. A set of useful indexes introduced in this paper is also proposed as a new supporting decision tool. The results of this study are expected to give a new perspective and applicable apprroach in river transport assessment in other riverine countries with similar characteristics to Indonesia, especially in South East Asian countries. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.