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The Federal Waterways Engineering and Research Institute (German Bundesanstalt für Wasserbau), abbreviated BAW, is a higher federal authority and an executive agency of the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI).

Its principal duty is advising the Federal Waterways and Shipping Office in Germany on all commercial hydraulic engineering issues and, in particular, inspecting commercial hydraulic engineering structures and installations. As a research institution, the BAW conducts commercial hydraulic engineering research and development in the fields of structural, geotechnical and hydraulic engineering.

The BAW is the main provider of expert hydraulic engineering reports on all expansion, upgrade and modification projects along German waterways.

Drawing on its research, the BAW has introduced numerous innovations to hydraulic engineering in Germany including using ship handling simulators to route fairways, fine-tuning multidimensional computational models for predicting the impact of large-scale hydraulic engineering measures and applying its inflatable weir technology to major waterways.

The BAW’s responsibilities also include helping to update and further develop standards for constructing, maintaining and operating waterways.

The Hydraulic Engineering Information Centre (IZW) and the German Coastal Engineering Research Council (KFKI) are both based at the BAW and provide a wide range of freely accessible specialist information. The BAW also makes digitalised images on the history of Germany’s waterways available to the general public in the historical image library of the German federal waterways.

The BAW publishes the technical regulations for German federal waterways (TR-W), which bring together the technical rules of commercial hydraulic engineering that apply to waterways in Germany. It also provides an extensive German/English glossary of specialist hydraulic engineering terms, amongst other things, in its publicly accessible wiki. In addition, the BAW runs the Hydraulic Engineering Repository HENRY, a specialist repository for academic publications from the field of hydraulic engineering.

Offices and structure
As well as its headquarters in Karlsruhe, the BAW also has an office in Hamburg. Both sites are equipped with extensive testing and laboratory facilities. The BAW is divided into four specialist departments (Hydraulic Engineering in Inland Areas, Hydraulic Engineering in Coastal Areas, Structural Engineering and Geotechnical Engineering) and an administrative department.

History
The end of the Second World War and the unique situation in which Berlin found itself brought the curtain down on the “Preußische Versuchsanstalt für Wasser-, Erd- und Schiffbau”, Germany’s former research institute for waterways, earthworks and foundation engineering. During the country’s post-war reconstruction, Karlsruhe was chosen as a suitable location for the newly reorganised waterways engineering administration in the western zones of occupation because of its proximity to and close scientific relationship with what is today the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The BAW’s first director, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Heinrich Wittmann, was also the director of the university’s Theodor Rehbock Institute. The Federal Waterways Engineering and Research Institute was established in 1948 as the technical successor of the institute “Preußische Versuchsanstalt für Wasser-, Erd- und Schiffbau”, which had been founded in Berlin in 1903. On 3 October 1990, the German Democratic Republic’s Research Institute for Navigation, Hydraulic and Foundation Engineering (Forschungsanstalt für Schifffahrt, Wasser- und Grundbau, FAS) was incorporated into the BAW.