Ports of the Future: vision 2030 Bringing together innovative technologies, tools and policies through an EU network at TRA2020 Helsinki

by & filed under Events, Project news.

 

 

With the physical conference cancelled, some of the objectives of TRA2020 will be realised by virtual means. Numerous strategic, invited and special focus sessions of TRA2020 are organised as webinars – you’re welcome to join in!

Information on all TRA webinars will be updated on this webpage: https://traconference.eu/

 

 

Ports of the Future: vision 2030
Bringing together innovative technologies, tools and policies through an EU network

 

Date and time:  Tuesday 23 June 2020, 11.00–12.30 (CEST)

Organiser: Manuela Flachi, Magellan

Read more about the webinar and register

 

 

“The Future of Ports” TRA webinar with ALICE and Port of the Future projects

by & filed under Events, Project news.

Coming up! “The Future of Ports” TRA webinar with ALICE and Port of the Future projects

 

 

DockstheFuture and ALICE platform are jointly organising a TRA invited session on “The Future of Ports: vision 2030 – Bringing together innovative technologies, tools and policies through an EU network” in a form of a webinar on Tuesday, 23 June at 11:00-12:30 CEST.

The webinar is a redesigned invited session supposed to take place at the TRA2020 conference in Helsinki, Finland 27-30 April 2020.  The four H2020 important initiatives – DockstheFuture, COREALIS, PortForward, PixelPorts – and an Interreg project – ResQU2, join forces under the umbrella of the ALICE platform to bring you latest innovative technologies and tools for future ports.

 

The webinar is free of charge but registration is required via this link:

https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7694253036283717900

 

The webinar agenda: The Future of Ports: vision 2030 – Bringing together innovative technologies, tools, and policies through an EU network

Organiser: Manuela Flachi; Magellan

Moderator:  Salvador Furio;  ALICE corridors, hubs and synchromodality chair

Speakers:

  • Nicola Sacco, University of Genova
  • Wiebe de Boer Deltares
  • Ignacio Lacalle Úbeda, Universitat Politecnica de Valencia
  • Christian Blobner, Fraunhofer Institut
  • Lauri Ojala, University of Turku

 

 

 

Port-City Redevelopment and the Circular Economy Agenda in Europe

by & filed under Governance, Port infrastructure, Sustainability.

By R. Karimpour

In the era of globalisation, our world is in transition and there are challenges every day, such as climate change, and natural resource depletion. These environmental challenges threaten our lives and necessitate taking measures to transition toward resilient and reliable low-carbon developments. In this context, sustainability has recently gained substantial attention across sectors. In the face of increasing growth in the world economy, together with natural resource depletion, there is a need for new economic approaches. As a response to the improvement in resource performance, economies have started to explore ways not only to reuse products but also to restore more precious material and energy inputs.

The concept of a ‘Circular Economy’ (CE) can promise a move to sustainability in businesses and economies. Sustainable relations between port city stakeholders is one of the emerging sectors. However, globally, port cities are within an economic system that is structured on the linear ‘take-make-dispose’ model, not sustainable models.

During the last two decades, ports and their urban areas have been increasingly facing environmental challenges. Ports can have significant environmental impacts due to the types of activities that take place in them, resulting in negative externalities such as air and water pollution that mirror the destructive linear economy models at port-cities.

Continual globalisation based on trade liberalisation, with its increasing cargo transport, has resulted in a significant increase in pressures on port infrastructure and city resources, which should be addressed in a sustainable way. A limited number of studies on European port cities’ sustainability have focused on ports under the CE approach, specifically within the ports’ waste management and energy efficiency context. This chapter reviews of ports and development, city and development, and explores Port-City redevelopment within the CE agenda that has been undertaken in the context of European ports. The review identifies what some European port cities have been doing to become more sustainable, with the help of a CE approach. It discusses challenges and potentials in European port cities and concludes on how ports are currently realising the potential of CE strategies, in particular for redevelopment and also competition in the market. Furthermore, it identifies how EU ports have voiced a need for further regulation to support the transition to the circular economy.

Keywords: Port cities, Circular economy,  Redevelopment, Sustainability

This book chapter includes:

  • Introduction
  • Cities and Their Ports, A Mutual Changing Relation
  • Circular Economy: A Solution for Port-City Development
  • Port-Cities Challenges: From a Linear Economy to a Circular Economy  Approach
  • Conclusions and Recommendations

Read the full article here: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030364632

Docks the Future is organising a workshop to showcase its Project Common Index (PCI) tool and to measure their innovativeness and transferability

by & filed under Events, Project news.

 

Docks the Future is organising a workshop to showcase its Project Common Index (PCI) tool for evaluating port-related projects with the common scope of ” PortoftheFuture “and to measure their innovativeness and transferability.

 

?19 May
 ⏰9:00-12:00 CEST
 ?press@circletouch.eu

The workshop welcomes ports experts to join us on 19 May 2020 from 9-12 am CEST. For more information or registration please contact the organizer:

Docks The Future project’s workshop on port KPIs and port evaluation tool

by & filed under Events, Project news.

 

WORKSHOP 19 MAY ON PCI-PROJECT COMMON INDEX

The EU-funded port project ‘DocksTheFuture’ project has been dealing with current and future challenges within the European port sector. In this context, we have developed a KPI set and a project evaluation tool that helps to illustrate the contribution of individual port projects to different objectives and to compare various alternatives with a focus on essential future port challenges.

Therefore, we would like to invite you to a virtual workshop during which we will present our approach in order to discuss it with you and other stakeholders from the port community. We would be very glad if you will find the time to join us online on 19 May 2020, 9-12 am.

In order to provide you with the most possible benefits from the workshop, we would like to ask you to send us one or two project examples from your port. These should be concrete measures that you have either implemented or that you are planning to implement. It can also be two alternative measures for attaining the same objective. In order to do the full evaluation with our DtF approach, the following information would be required (may be an existing project description):

  • main objectives of the project or measure
  • (expected) impact with regard to these objectives
  • associated costs
  • information about innovative aspects
  • information helping to assess the transferability of the project/measure to other ports

Please confirm whether you would like to attend until the 8th of May

We will get back to you with further details then and we will be of course available for any questions regarding the workshop.

DocksTheFuture – The Network Of Excellence towards the Port of Tomorrow

by & filed under Events, Project news.

 

 

 

 

 

DocksTheFuture is a voluntary cooperative Network of Excellence gathering the most innovative ports willing to team up and take actions to support the maritime community achieving the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, using the opportunities given by International funding programmes such as the ones set by the EU Green Deal.

 

WHY WE ARE SETTING UP THE NETWORK

On December 2019, the European Commission presented the European Green Deal, a new the growth strategy that aims to make Europe the first carbon-neutral continent by 2050, as an an integral part of the EU plan to implement the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development
Agenda.
Since transport accounts for a quarter of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, there are essential contributions required from the port and shipping sector to achieve the UN and EU targets. Despite being a challenging path, it also provides promising benefits for the whole society and important business opportunities for the sector.

 

WHAT IS THE NETWORK

The DocksTheFuture Network of Excellence is a tool supporting ports to develop innovatively projects to achieve their sustainability targets, based on the opportunities deriving from funding programmes such as the ones promoted by the Green Deal.

● It shall promote ideas for the Port of the Future, inspired by other ongoing initiatives and proposals and have a leading and proactive role in the process of overcoming the industry challenges of today and tomorrow, also in order to implement co-funded projects and support policy changes;

 ● It shall speed up the distribution of practical innovative ideas, hasten the spread of best practices, promoting new technologies to innovate the business and the whole port industry;
● It shall enrich the dialogue with and among other organisations such as the European Technology Platforms, international associations, and maritime clusters – without any kind of competition character.

The setup of the Network is based on ports participation while other maritime and logistics actors will be invited to join and contribute to the activities based on their willingness to cooperate and their relevance in the different initiatives.

 

THE CORE TOPICS THE NETWORK WILL FOCUS ON:

Essential parts of the EU Green Deal founding elements clearly relates to the port industry:
● Supplying clean, affordable and secure energy to any port-related transport means
● Mobilising the community and the industry for a clean and circular economy
● Building and renovating port infrastructures in energy and resource-efficient way
● Supporting smart digital seamless solutions for the entire port community
● Accelerating the shift to sustainable and smart mobility, to achieve a 90% reduction
in transport emissions by 2050.

 

In this respect, some preliminary core topics to set up new projects have been identified:

➢ Energy efficiency (e.g. cold ironing, smart grid)
➢ Alternative fuels (e.g. bio-fuels, hydrogen)
➢ Sustainable and resilient transport infrastructure system
➢ Emerging technologies and digitalisation across the logistic chain
➢ Cyber-security
➢ Innovative financing tools
➢ Multimodal transport
➢ City-Port relation
➢ Circular economy

 

For information or requests, please contact us at   info@docksthefuture.eu

Network of Excellence Team 

 

Docks The Future’s 2nd International Consultative Committee (ICC) meeting was held on 28 April 2020

by & filed under Events, Project news, Results.

The second International Consultative Committee’s meeting of the DocksTheFuture project took place on 28 April 2020 between 10-11.

The Objective of the conf.call was: How to develop the “ Relation with Med & Neighbouring Countries”, and to add a specific chapter on this topic to the Deliverable D.5 of the project.  For this purpose, four below areas suggested to be at the centre of discussion:
 Current ports’ Policies in Mediterranean basin, cooperation or competition?
 How Med ports will face the environmental challenge, moving towards sustainability?
 How to proceed with capacity building for the less developed ports in the Med region?
 The best practices of successful maritime and port projects in the Med region.

The partticipants of this meeting were from four groups of:
o ICC members: Michele Acciaro, Paul Brewster,
o MEDport Association: Luca Lupi, Gabrielle Charpentier
o WestMED Initiative: Javier Fernandez
o Docks The Future (DTF) project’s partners: Circle s.p.a: Mr.Karimpuor, Alexio Picco, Beatrice Dauria, PortExpertise group: Joris Claeys, Peter Bresseleers , Magellan Association: Manuela Flachi

Mr.Alexio Picco from Circle s.p.a that leads the project welcomed the participants of the meeting and explained about the project and its progress. He also pointed out how to proceed organising the 3rd expert workshop in this pandemic days.
Mr.Karimpour from Circle s.p.a presented the Docks The Future, and the Structure of the meeting. He gave a brief introduction to the project that DTF is a project funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020. As a Coordination and Support Action (CSA) it will support the EC (DG MOVE and INEA) in covering coordination and networking of Research and Innovation projects, Programs and policies. The project is coordinated by Circle S.p.A (Italy) as the leader of the Working Group including: ISL – Institut für Seeverkehrswirtschaft und Logistik (Germany), Magellan (Portugal), PortExpertise (Belgium) , University of Genoa (Italy).
Then, the Current conditions of the Docks The Future for the below workpackages explained in short: WorkPackage.1: Definition Of The Concept,  WorkPackage.2: Clustering Of Projects, WorkPackage.3: Evaluation Analysis, WorkPackage.4: Dissemination,  WorkPackage.5: Plan For The Exploitation Of The Results.

In continuation, Mr. Karimpour mentioned that DocksTheFuture has already addressed in early stages of the Project: preliminary research on the “Port of Future” concept; and the definition of several “Port of the Future topics” to be addressed and their related targets in 2030;
o Port infrastructure
o Accessibility and Standards
o Integration in the supply chain and synchromodality
o Environment
o Sustainability
o Relation with Med & Neighbouring Countries
o Digitalization
o Port-city relations
o Governance
o Human element
o Safety & security
o Bridging R&D and implementation

In WP.1 Docks The Future performed the work on essential concepts of a port of the future. Deliverable 1.5 of the project: Port of the Future concepts, topics, and projects,desktop analysis lead by PortExpertise, has already touched the topic of “Relation with Med & Neighbouring Countries”, some of them listed below.

Some of the references of PortExpertise for this Deliverable have been “Port Cooperation Policies in the Mediterranean Basin: An Experimental Approach Using Cluster Analysis”’, “Challenges for the future of ports. What can be learned from the Spanish Mediterranean ports? “, “Port-2-Port Communication Enabling Short Sea Shipping: Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean”, and “ Port Collaborative Decision Making (PortCDM) project.”
Later on, the Objective of the conf.call highlighted: How to develop the “ Relation with Med & Neighbouring Countries”, and the four below areas suggested to be at the centre of discussion after the MEDport presentation.

 Current ports’ Policies in Mediterranean basin, cooperation or competition?
 How Med ports will face the environmental challenge, moving towards sustainability?
 How to proceed with capacity building for the less developed ports in the Med region?
 The best practices of successful maritime and port projects in the Med region.

Mr. Luca Lupi , Secretary General of the MEDport Association, presented the Association as per below. The MEDports Association is the result of the desire and necessity to ensure port and maritime cooperation between the southern and northern banks of the Mediterranean.
• 23 Port Authorities, 3 Associated Members, 6 Objectives, 6 Technical Committees
23 Port Authorities and National Port’s Agencies from Northern (15) and Southern banks (8) in SPAIN, ALGERIA ,FRANCE ,ITALY ,MOROCCO ,TUNISIA ,LEBANON,SLOVENIA ,MALTA ,GREECE. Furthermore, MEDport has 3 Associated Members from Northern (1) and Southern banks (2), and 5 Training Institutes from Northern (3) and Southern banks (2) associated to the works of the MEDports Association. Luca stated the MEDport objectives.

Later it was emphasized that the North-South Med cooperation is at the center of focus for the associations’ activities. There are committees in the association for the internal works: RII Committee: Relations with International Institutions, Smartport Committee, SMA Committee: Statistics and Market Analysis, Security & Safety Committee, Sustainability Committee, and ETME Committee Employment, Training and Maritime Expertise.

He added that there are Actions within MEDports such as Signing MoU with the Union of the Mediterranean (UfM) and MED CRUISE, Organizing Training Seminars for trainees from both banks. MEDport is also active in international events and projects. MEDports Association Forum (MPF) conducts activities like Annual event bringing together experts, ports, and actors from the maritime sector of the two Mediterranean banks based on a topic which welcomes the needs and interests of all Members.

Furthermore, it is highlighted the MEDport contribution to some regional projects such as:
The Young Employment in Ports of the Mediterranean (YEP-MED);  Better match labour supply with labour demand in the Med area
RMF2M project ; Réseau Méditerranéen de Formation aux Métiers Maritimes (RMF2M), Mediterranean Network Occupations Of Training Program, an  Intelligent platform that will summarize the training formations and job offers to correspond to a profile

In the end, it is explained that DocksTheFuture & MEDports Association can have cooperation and collaboration in many common fields of activities, a Win-Win cooperation. It could be listed but not limited to the following points :
 Access to the largest current Ports Network in the Med area
 Exchange best practices from our Members
 Take advantage of the work of the internal Committees, especially from the Smartport and Training Committees
 The MEDPorts Association highlights the problems of the ports of the South to the EU, especially through the RII Committee

At this stage, the ICC members entered the discussion on the topic with the MEDport invitees. Mr. Acciaro asked if MEDport have some kind of information on the currently funded projects in terms of collaboration among the European Ports, or Mediterranean ports?
Mr. Lupi replied that MEDport is working on that it is very important to work together to solve the problems and it is one of the reasons to set up the association. At this stage, Mr.Javier Fernandez from the West MED initiative said that the maritime cooperation and initiatives have been at the focus of attention by the EU. Basically this maritime initiative has been working for a couple of years with strong leadership from member countries that sit together every 2-3 months in the framework of the
the steering committee and in December 2018 in Algeria meeting, they set up a road map for sustainable development of Blue Economy in the West MED area.

One of the cores of this roadmap is the “Cooperation” between the states in the region. For West Med, it is important to develop North-South cooperation too and is really relevant. West Med has managed to support 12 projects in the region, and working in this context of the DocksTheFuture is really welcomed and valuable. He proposed two points:
1. The cooperation and participation from the DocksTheFuture for the next forthcoming steering committee in Malta, and the other one
2. Each of the partners of the technical groups of the sustainable transport framework has two representatives: one from institutes and one from the industry. The national hubs are working with these two representatives. So for the DocksTheFuture and MEDport will be an opportunity to be in contact with these technical groups and the representatives.

Mr. Acciaro asked if the sustainable transport scope of the West Med includes maritime transport, and the reply was yes. Mr.Javier also mentioned that it is just initiated, it also may anticipate the topics of the LNG and the on the motorways of the seas.
Mr. Alexio said that if any of the participants can mention one point to focus at this step for the cooperation in the scope of the ports in North and South. Ms. Charpentier from MEDport agreed with the MEDport perspective. Manuela from Magellan highlighted the communication. Beatrice from Circle stated that finding the right contact and getting in touch with the correct contacts at the ports of the Med region is very difficult. It could be one of the challenges for further cooperation in the future. Mr. Joris Claeys, also added that this topic is also related to the “Network of the Excellence”. He also added that as Reza bolded, one of the important points is sharing the best practices among the states and ports in the MED area and also the EU.

Mr. Brewster, the ICC member also acknowledge Mr. Joris’ statement on the importance of a sort of a network; the “Network of Excellence”, to be a collaborative network. The point is a “Balance “between cooperation and competition.
Mr. Javier, also mentioned that the maritime initiatives are a collaborative type between the countries, sometimes partnership in preparing the proposals, competition have not been seen yet in the West Med.

Mr. Acciaro stated that it is very valuable to have the WestMED initiative and the MEDport association because the collaboration between the Mediterranean countries have not yet produced the desired results, as the EU should cooperate more with MED Countries. Potential improvements in the cooperation are known in the case of China but more can be done also in the Mediterranean area. There is an urgent need for more collaboration in the Med area. He suggested to include other countries in initiatives such as Turkey, or even the UK. In continuation, he added that when we talk about the European ports there are right concerns that EU regulations in the ports might constrain the developments of EU ports, and damage their competitiveness with respect to some business segments in other regions, for example in transhipment and in cruise sector in countries such as Russia, Egypt, or Turkey, which should adopt similar rules as EU ports.
Harmonising funding and policy were discussed. It would be valuable to consider also potential relations with the Belt and Road initiatives in terms of improving coordination of global maritime transport networks with EU internal transport networks. He added that compared to the Med ports in the south of EU, in Northern Europe there are more measures in terms of technology and innovations such as Onshore Power Supply, programmes to advance Hydrogen, and low carbon alternative fuels. He thinks that collaboration in Mediterranean level and applying the best practices across the European ports can help a lot also Med ports

Mr. Picco put a comment that there will be a good big project of onshore-power supply that is in evaluation within the motorways of the sea, in the Med area, and other forthcoming initiatives and projects as a good opportunity for the collaboration between the MED ports and the West Med initiative. Mr. Bresseleers in continuation joined the discussion and left his comment. He said that they captured a lot of info from the Med ports and he is wondering why there is so much internal communication in Med ports, which not reaching out to other ports. The port of Antwerp had a webinar on Covid19, one of the issues about the ships coming from Med region to Antwerp and the required Sanitation Certificates. So it shows that cooperation is more needed between ports even more than before.
In the end, Mr. Picco summarised the conclusion that we are going to plan how to go more in the analysis of this topic, and for sure we will come back to the participants of the 2nd ICC meeting to use their valuable comments to develop our specific chapter on the relation with the Neighbouring countries.

It also emphasized that DocksTheFuture is going to use the capacity of these two initiatives to develop a specific chapter on “Relation with Med and neighbouring countries”. For this purpose, DocksTheFuture is going to keep contacts with these two initiatives and regularly attend the forthcoming physical or online events of the MEDport Association & WestMED Initiatives in order to gather the info and feedback. In addition, DocksTheFuture will connect to all social media (Twitter, FB, LinkedIn) of MED port & WestMed Initiatives to disseminate each other’s activity on the same topic.

As the next step, for developing the specific chapter on the “Relation with MED and neghbouring countries” within the project, DocksTheFuture is going to send Questionnaire to the Med Ports & West Med members on some relevant group of topics such as Current port Policies in Mediterranean basin, best mechanisms of cooperation among Med ports, top challenges in the Med ports in moving towards Sustainability, capacity building in the Med region’s ports, identifying the best practices from other EU ports to be implemented for the MED ports, the potential of the Port-2-Port communications for enabling Short Sea Shipping between the Med ports, and etc.
Furthermore, inviting the experts from these two initiatives for the DTF expert call and the final conference is one of the measures to help DocksTheFuture in developing the specific chapter on “Relation with Med & Neighbouring countries”. This specific chapter may include other measures like interviews with some port managers of non EU-Countries (for example in Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Russia, etc.), and also approaching the successful European regional maritime & port organizations like HELCOM in the Baltic region in terms of their cooperation with non-European states (such as Russia) in order to simulate for the Mediterranean ports in relationship with Non-EU ports in Northern African and also Black Sea areas. Furthermore, one of the steps can be exploring the mechanism for involving the East Adriatic Sea ports such as Albania, Bosnia, and Montenegro in further cooperation with European Ports and maritime projects to reach the standards of the European regulations, through the EU funds and capacity building.

Ports on the move to become Global Logistics Information Exchange Hubs

by & filed under Digitalization, Integration in the supply chain and synchromodality, Port-city relations.

Ports are taking significant strides with digital transformation and are starting to declare themselves as “smart.” The result is impressive gains in operational efficiency, regulatory compliance, and customer satisfaction. Smart ports have the opportunity to establish themselves as logistics information exchange hubs serving their regional transport ecosystem. 

As ports digitalize their processes, they establish foundations for providing benefits to other participants in the transport ecosystems. A landscape of new revenue-generating information services enabling carriers, shippers, and other players to significantly improve their operational predictability, efficiency, visibility, and capacity utilization is now opening.

In the article “Smart Ports: On the move to become Global Logistics Information Exchange Hubs,” four industry experts elaborate on some of the smart-port trends, and how the emergence of the smart-port concept exemplifies the need for the port to redefine its role to meet its customer demands.  This article is co-authored by Hanane Becha, TRAXENS & UN/CEFACT, Mikael Lind, RISE, André Simha, MSC , and Francois Bottin, CMA CGM.

Data-Powered Operational Gains

Ports and supply chains involve thousands of independent companies and individuals depending on each other’s policies, plans, and actions to make the right business decisions and run operations effectively. The smart port uses digital data streams to boost collaboration, align activities, and make decisions that improve vital processes across its operations. Some emerging smart-port trends are:

  • Smart technologies are informing about conditions and the utilization of physical infrastructures, such as roads, bridges, railroads, depots, terminals, warehouses. For example, cost-effective sensors are transmitting real-time data about operating conditions. Enabling the port to identify needed maintenance or repairs and avoid unplanned downtime proactively.
  • Digitally connected cargo handling helps ports to increase their handling capacity and productivity by ensuring that stacking cranes, straddle carriers, forklifts, and other equipment are correctly maintained and operate at peak efficiency, including the automatic identification and detection of containers.
    Introduction of Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) systems for intermodal traffic to enable just-in-time arrivals and just-in-time provision of services

“Transparency creates competition – competition creates larger markets“

The goal for the Norwegian government is to transfer at least 30% of all road-cargo over a distance 300+ kilometers to rail or Shortsea by 2030 and 50% by 2050. The latest forecast in the Norwegian transport plan indicates growth in cargo-transport of 290 million tons in 2050 – 80%, which will be transported by road. The Norwegian national transport plan forecasts growth in freight transport of 290 million tons by 2050. 80% of this cargo is assumed to be transported by road. The increase corresponds to a 100 km long continuous number of trucks every day —a significant set-back to the ambition of transferring goods from the road to the sea, comments Jørn Askvik Managing Director Shortsea Promotion Centre Norway.

“Decision support systems need to address both operational efficiencies as well as customer need for easily accessible and transparent information – supporting all phases of the customer journey.”
Jørn Askvik, Managing Director Shortsea Promotion Centre Norway  

-The challenge is to acknowledge that the customer decision process is not only a decision between different competitors but also an assessment of risk. A customer using road-based logistics with success will evaluate Shortsea as an operational risk – “Why change something that ain’t broken.” Time spent identifying and assessing alternative solutions is part of the transaction cost for the customer. Lack of transparent and readily available information will create barriers for change, regardless of operational efficiencies. The “disruptive” player in the Shortsea Shipping world will be the one who provides relevant and accessible information allowing for decisions based upon comparisons on relevant criteria, says Jørn Askvik.

Redefining the role of the Port

A port is an ecosystem within the broader self-organized ecosystem of the global shipping industry. Both systems depend on distributed collaboration and coordination. The interdependence creates a demand for capabilities to utilize the necessary blend of data from others within the port to optimize operations. Each actor in a port needs to contribute to and access up-to-date situational awareness to achieve a collective and mutually beneficial level of efficiency. A port is a series of production systems as its various actors each conduct routine operations for ships, passengers, and cargo handling. The effectiveness of these production systems, and their integration, is critical to a port’s success.

The digitalized future port does not only provide physical services but also digital services.”
Mikael Lind, Associate Professor and Senior strategic research advisor at RISE

Ports are thus emerging to become important information exchange hubs deploying data captured from shipping lines, trucking, and logistics, and off-dock storage providers to increase the efficiency of the overall maritime transportation ecosystem. The emergence of the (digital) smart port concept exemplifies how a port needs to apply a systematic approach to framing its purpose to continually redefine roles to meet the changing needs of its customers and actors.

Mikael Lind, Associate Professor and Senior strategic research advisor at RISE

 

To be conceived as a transshipment hub, the port needs to define its position as a multimodal hub to all the different modes of transport. The situation as a multimodal hub means that the port will capture much information associated with episodic visitors and the cargo/passengers that they are carrying.

The emphasis in the debate on port optimization has been on the port being a consumer of information to provide value in (physical) service provision. Given that the port needs to collaborate and coordinate highly integrated with the transport chain, the port should become a proxy to gather data thus creating opportunities to become the provider of information to the other parties in the transport chain.

 

Source: ShortSeaShipping

The European Green Deal: New Opportunities for Port Cities?

by & filed under Environment, Governance, Port-city relations, Sustainability.

20 Apr 2020

Stephan Hauser

With the European Green Deal made public last December, the new European Commission took the first steps to transforming Europe into the first climate neutral continent by 2050. The Green Deal offers a wide range of climate policies and measures that directly affect European cities and citizens. Whereas port cities are high polluters and important economic concentrations, they are not mentioned in the European Green Deal as such. However, to make the ‘’effective and fair transition’’ that the Commission aims for, port cities could make a difference as they concentrate key economic and industrial facilities and are key to the EU’s long-term economic competitiveness.

The success of sustainable planning in industrial port cities would set an example to face climate change and the increasing urbanization of the world. The port of Rotterdam stands as an example. As the first hub of Europe for containers and oil, the port of Rotterdam emits almost 20% of the total Dutch emission of CO2, which illustrates the significance of port cities on national statistics.

The literal omission of port cities in the communication goes hand in hand with the existence of legal obstacles to the energy transition: a lack of precision and efficiency of rules. The European Green Deal states: ‘’the Commission will work with the Member States to step up the EU’s efforts to ensure that current legislation and policies relevant to the Green Deal are enforced and effectively implemented’’ (European Green Deal). While national and European regulatory systems co-exist, they occasionally prevent more sustainable practices by over-lapping, complexifying or conflicting with each other; the environmental field being shared between the EU and Member States is one example. The absence of clear legal frameworks and definitions makes decision-making complex and unpredictable. Investing in the energy transition and the conversion of port cities that the Commission effectively plans to tackle, has therefore become unattractive for both public and private actors.

The communication of the European Green Deal is promising as it finally emphasises the lack of precisions, definitions and clarity of European regulatory systems and their consequences in times of crisis. Recognizing and addressing these flaws would allow the new Commission to make an important step towards the efficiency of European legal tools.

To achieve its ambitions, however, the Commission needs to engage relevant actors and stakeholders. In the case of port cities, maritime transport companies and port authorities are examples of stakeholders that could make a big difference in executing climate policies. The involvement of such actors relies on an improvement in the clarity of rules. The success of participation by diverse actors depends on a real legal simplification rather than additional layers of regulations. The Commission submitted its proposal for the first ‘’Climate Law’’ to the European Parliament and the Council in March 2020. This could be a crucial step towards this goal.

Acknowledgement
It reflects the evolving thoughts of the authors and expresses the discussions between researchers on the socio-economic, spatial and cultural questions surrounding port city relationships. Special thanks for comments and reviews to Carola Hein, Maurice Jansen, Paul van de Laar and Hilde Sennema.

Source: Port City Futures

How international business can move beyond travel amid the Coronavirus(COVID19) epidemia?

by & filed under Bridging R&D and implementation, Digitalization, Integration in the supply chain and synchromodality.

Spinview:

Amidst the stockpiling from supermarkets and the fast adoption of face worn air filters, much has been written about how people are defending themselves against the spread of Coronavirus, the latest respiratory threat making its way across the globe.

Few, however, are questioning how the international business will be affected by government travel warnings and a workforce increasingly reluctant to fly.

This, when added to awoke generation hell-bent on fixing the damage done by polluting modes of transport to our planet means the business must innovate once more.

We need to find new ways to be in the room when we can’t….or won’t actually be in the room.

The proliferation of video calling apps speaks of the need for something to serve the desire from business to connect internationally, but all are limited by either the number of participants or if sharing an environment, the strength of the speaker and the steadiness of the caller’s hand.

None so far manage to allow people to share more than their face, voice, and screen.

Step forward Agority from Spinview. A spatial reality space where you can connect with multiple people, spread as far across the world from each other as it is possible to be.

Effective collaboration requires true presence which up until now has only been available through face to face meetings.  But face to face meetings increases costs and carbon footprints due to business travel.  Spinviews’ Agority service offers remote teams a virtual extension of their workspace – a space where dispersed teams come together to share, learn, plan and create – or simply chat.  The ability to interact with others remotely as if you were face to face, accessing a feature-rich toolset for effective collaboration, note-taking and customisable space sharing without the inconvenience of travel – save time and money.  By providing shared virtual environments where participants are present as if they were in a face to face meeting Spinview offers a complete set of tools for effective live remote collaboration.

Going beyond the sharing of screens and meeting of avatars that are normally associated with virtual reality networking, a variety of industries from oil and gas to telecoms to infrastructure and construction, retail and more are using and embracing this platform in ways even we hadn’t thought of.  From reducing travel time, cost reductions, error reductions and efficiency enhancement to reducing carbon footprint and the ability to create ‘virtual’ war rooms.

Here are just a few ways some of our customers are seeing an immediate improvement to their organisation workflow and providing a more sustainable approach.  If you’d like to discuss how Agority can assist your business please reach out to any member of the Spinview team or email us at hello@spinview.io

Click on the below link to watch a short introduction:

https://vr.spinviewglobal.com/Agority_demo/

 

 

1. Employee On-boarding

There’s the blue-chip tech giant who used to fly new team members from America to Eastern Europe every month to visit their factory. They tell us they now have a virtual welcome program which has seen a 100% reduction in these flights, saving the organisation hundreds of thousands of dollars per annum
New joiners are first welcomed with a video in the Agority space before joining a live tour of the factory. Wearing VR headsets eliminates the real world around them so they can be fully immersed in the factory visit – taking in a full 360 view and having their questions answered in real-time as if walking side by side.

 

2. Leadership & Employee Training

For those responsible for training, learning and development or organising international meetings, Spinview’s Agority platform can allow you the feeling of physical presence like you are in the same room even if you are miles apart.  It brings back the sense of presence, the subtly of gesture and body language, of having shared space with another human being that’s so important when coaching leadership.

For those that want professional coaching support, we offer a unique service combining Agority with our training facilitator Q595 to provide professional expertise of running workshops and learning programs through VR, providing a cost-effective solution that’s also kinder to our people and planet.

Q595 provides leadership solutions to organisations in the area of Leadership Training Programs, Advisory Services and Coaching. Their Leadership Academy is focused on Leadership Effectiveness, Collaboration in Teams, Personal Impact and Sales. Q595 offers Leadership Coach Training and other programs as fully blended learning journeys.

Agority is really at its best however, when used in conjunction with the other applications on Spinview’s easy to use platform.

The partnership between Spinview and Q595 offers a powerful proposition that video conferencing can’t compete with, not just for the humanity of the interaction, but also through the additional connection of its intuitive media and document sharing platform.

In sharing this partnership, Spinview & Q595 hope to support people around the world in connecting with more humility and focus, when its need now more than ever.

 

3. Remote Inspections

Our European network client uses Agority to not only communicate between teams but to drive greater efficiency in managing its infrastructure.
Using Agority, a remote inspection of its road infrastructure, tracks and properties means hard to access tunnels, complex wiring and historical finds are no challenge to maintain when an engineer is able to share his or her view for expert, on-the-spot guidance and repair.

The application of our tagging software means they can annotate work completed or required so other teams can see at once where they need to be, what has been done and what they might need to bring with them to complete a repair or the next phase of work.

We can even predict when that repair might need additional maintenance….but that’s a conversation for another time.

So as you can see a shared spatial collaboration environment provides the ability to host meetings, presentations, and discussions without the need to travel.  Any worker can seamlessly collaborate in real-time despite geographical boundaries – giving everyone in every business the ability to “see what you see” and a sense of physical presence and connection regardless of technical know-how.

In her 15-day sail from London to New York in August 2019, Greta Thunberg referenced the Swedish concept of flygskam (flight shaming) and this has led a movement toward staycations and short-haul preference in the leisure space – now exacerbated by Coronavirus.

But for business, the show must go on, despite the health challenges we face today and the environmental hurdles of tomorrow.

How can you be there when you can’t actually be there? Our clients believe Agority is the answer.

We exist to share our technology with everyone, to help everyone in every business to be more productive and sustainable, so talk to us about how you might benefit from Agority today.

For any questions or to arrange a virtual tour, please contact  https://spinview.io/contact/

Source: SPINVIEW