In general it is difficult to determine the direct land use on the landside of ports because there
is no uniform definition for port infrastructure as yet. It is however clear that nearly all land
on the landside of ports is sold or rented to private companies. As such, the costs associated
with this type of land use are already internalised by the users and we will not include them in
this study. We will instead focus on the waterside of ports. Two elements are of interest here,
i.e. the surface of port basins and the surface of areas in ports that serve as a place to stay
overnight for inland navigation. The data for the first element are got from the ‘Meetkundige
Dienst Eindhoven’ and are based on digital topographical maps. They estimate the land use of
seaports and inland ports to be 47.4 km2
and 9.15 km2
respectively. As for the total area
meant for overnight stay, AVV (the above mentioned research agency of the Ministry of
Transport, Public Works and Water Management) estimated it at 3.15 km2
based on the
geographical information system ‘Vaarwegkenmerken in Nederland 1998’.