My question is if there are any other reports of this phenomena world wide and has there been any research published?
In rather general terms: The cold air picks up moist air above the relatively warm body of water (being a river, lake or the sea). To achieve a significant amount of snow fall the air mass has to be a fairly long time above the water ("at leats 45 minutes", stated in the question). This is the main reason why "river effect snow" is not too common. "Lake effect snow" (describing again basically the same process) is more common, since the conditions (airmass crossing a lake (or the sea) for at least 45 minutes) are more often met.
According to Wikipedia lake effect snow occurs on the whole of the Northern hemisphere (where temperatures during winter get cold enough for snow fall) in proximity to sufficiently large bodies of water. Especially the coasts of the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Sea of Japan. Apparently Istanbul is very prone to lake effect snow and experiences it basically each winter.
Quite some research on the lake effect snow was done during the past decades:
The publications by Niziol (and collaborators) focus on the forecasting.