With a winner to be announced at the IAPH World Ports Conference Gala Dinner on 18 March, all finalists make critical data available and make smart use of it to improve port resilience
In this IAPH World Ports Sustainability Program area of interest, resilient port and port-related infrastructure (both physical and digital) projects aim at anticipating demands of maritime transport and landside logistics. Resilient when faced with real changes in climate and weather conditions, resilient infrastructure projects also need to be developed in harmony with local communities, nature and heritage.
The shortlisted projects are fine examples of how to apply technology and data in order to improve resilience in port operations across the spectrum of activities.
Collaborative project – Green and Connected Ports
The GREEN C PORTS project pilots the use of sensors, big data and artificial intelligence to reduce the impact of port operations on their cities, monitor emissions from ports and vessels and optimize performance of port operations in the EU TEN-T Core Network.
Co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union and coordinated by Fundación Valencia Port with ten other partners, the project takes a very pragmatic approach by focussing on six specific case studies, namely to :
- decrease port traffic congestion and reduce CO2 emissions by 10% from trucks in the Port of Valencia;
- optimise vessel calls at the Port of Venice before and after port closure due to bad meteorological conditions;
- predict air quality levels in the Ports of Valencia and Piraeus and generate notifications to government institutions when certain emission levels are exceeded;
- predict noise quality levels in the Ports of Valencia and Piraeus and generate notifications to government institutions when certain emission levels are exceeded;
- predict how ship-to-shore crane productivity will be affected by waves, currents and wind, sending warnings 48 hours in advance to vessels calling at the Ports of Wilhelmshaven and Bremerhaven;
- inform shippers about the real emissions generated by their shipments in door-to-door transport chains between the Iberian peninsula and the Balearic Islands
The project also aims to develop a Port Environmental Performance IT platform that will receive real time data from the sensor networks and from existing operating systems in each port.
Port of Brisbane - NCOS online
Since 2017, the Port of Brisbane Pty Ltd (PBPL) has partnered with technology partners to develop NCOS Online. By providing a near real-time seven-day detailed forecast of environmental conditions and a vessel’s under keel clearance (UKC), NCOS Online has played a pivotal role in increasing in the Port of Brisbane’s navigational channel capacity and reducing its environmental impact, by helping to:
- increase vessel LOA by 13.6% to 350 metres and vessel beam by 11.1% to 50m, permitting larger vessels to call with corresponding efficiency improvements for cargo owners
- potentially delay significant investment in capital dredging projects
- provide a greater level of accuracy in vessel behaviour for the Harbour Master.
PBPL (with Seaport OPX) is developing and trialling additional modules which are also capable of analysing:
- climate change (risk of sea level rises, floods, storm surges on infrastructure)
- sediment dynamics
- vessel emission reduction (real time 'Green Button' option for optimal speed in weather conditions based on vessel size)
- cargo loading optimisation
- vessel swept path
The modules will be used regularly to inform and improve current operational decisions as well as project planning. This is distinct from historical approaches where modelling is typically undertaken during the planning phase of a project.
PortXchange - Pronto
In August 2019, PortXchange was launched by the Port of Rotterdam as an independent organisation with the aim of the taking the Pronto system - a shared digital platform developed for shipping lines, agents, terminals and other nautical service providers for real time information exchange around port calls - to be tried out and used in other ports in the world.
The ultimate aim is to achieve just-in-time vessel port calls in order to reduce CO2 emissions as well as anchor time resulting in lower NOx emissions.
As soon as the Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) is known, a vessel is assigned its own timeline in Pronto where all events during the port call are shown. The progress and status of the events are continuously updated on the dashboard.
Users from the port community can monitor events and make adjustments where necessary. If they wish, users can receive notifications and warnings if there are status changes, delays or planning conflicts in real time. Furthermore, the Pronto interface allows the calculation of emissions and saving potential at port call level during and after arrival at the port.
Pronto is currently being tested in Rotterdam, Felixstowe, Algeciras and Houston and will be expanding to more ports in 2020. Maersk and Shell, Pronto’s launch customers in Rotterdam, are testing the potential of Pronto to reduce shipping emissions overall.
Voting has been launched online for all six WPSP categories and will close at midnight CET on 28 February.
To see all six categories and finalists in each, check out our competition area.
For those who would like to vote (maximum one session to vote for up to all six categories), please click here.
Contact details for the IAPH World Ports Sustainability Awards:
Antonis Michail, Technical Director – World Ports Sustainability Program