Developing Data-Driven Models for Real-Time Dredging Production Optimization

Working at Boskalis is about creating new horizons and sustainable solutions. In a world where population growth, increase of global trade, demand for (new) energy and climate change are driving forces, we challenge you to make your mark in finding innovative and relevant solutions for complex infrastructural and marine projects. Within a vibrant company culture, you will be working as part of a diverse, international team of experts. We offer you the opportunity to realize your full personal potential and expand your professional career by creating new horizons. Together. Boskalis is currently looking for a student to start their graduation project with us. Dredging vessels rely on trained crews to configure dredging process settings that directly affect production output, a task that involves numerous interacting physical processes and a wide range of operating conditions. We currently use a machine learning model to recommend operation settings to crews in real time, but there is clear room for improvement. Physics-informed machine learning, time-series modelling, and adaptive control methods are promising directions worth exploring, as they can capture relationships and patterns that the current approach does not yet take advantage of. The research project will require the student to conduct a literature review across these fields and determine which methods best fit our data and problem. Key design choices need to be made, such as how to combine physical knowledge with data-driven models, and how to validate improvements using historical data. With a variety of techniques available, an educated choice must be made to effectively improve our existing system. In this research you will Work with other data scientists and meet with multi-disciplinary engineers to understand the challenge. Conduct literature research on physics-informed machine learning, time-series modelling, and adaptive control, and how they can be applied to this problem. Formulate the problem i