The holistic approach to a smarter, greener and more sustainable port ecosystem
COREALIS
Capacity with a pOsitive enviRonmEntal and societAL footprInt:
portS in the future era.
COREALIS, a Port of the Future project that addressed the call MG-7-3-2017 of the H2020 Transport Work Programme, brings together a complementary consortium composed of 17 partners, from 9 European and associated countries, ranging from very large and medium ports, to top-level research institutes, ITS associations and well-established industrial partners and SMEs. COREALIS Project started in May 2018, it will run for 36 months and it is coordinated by The Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS).
COREALIS is developing an innovative framework for assisting cargo ports in handling their upcoming and future capacity, traffic, efficiency and environmental challenges. It is benefitting from disruptive technologies, including Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, next generation traffic management and emerging 5G networks.
COREALIS is proposing beyond state of the art, financially viable innovations for future ports. These will optimise the port land use and port operations towards circular economy aspects, requiring in this way minimum infrastructure upgrades. The innovations will be implemented and tested in real operating conditions in 5 Living Labs (Piraeus, Valencia, Antwerp, Livorno and Haminakotka ports) and are briefly named below:
- The COREALIS Green Truck Initiative, that implements
i) A dynamic Truck Appointment System aiming to coordinate and optimise the arrival of trucks according to the city traffic, terminal and other operations in the port area, so that queues, waiting times and congestion are minimised
ii) The Marketplace and chassis brokerage platform allowing online booking of port equipment and services- The COREALIS PORTMOD, aiming to increase operational efficiency, safety for personnel, emission analysis and improved data sharing by modelling and optimizing cargo and data flows within a port
- The COREALIS RTPORT, that implements a system for real time control of port operations over a 5G network
- The COREALIS Predictor for a dynamic and optimized port asset management.
- The COREALIS Cargo Flow Optimizer, aiming to facilitate the port managers and urban planners in their infrastructure investment planning by optimizing cargo flows across all transport modes
- The COREALIS Port of the Future Serious Game, aiming to assess the feasibility and sustainability of the socio-economic and environmental development of a port within the surrounding coastal and urban area.
- The COREALIS Green Cookbook, aiming to help ports to lower their environmental footprint, assess their energy profiles and move to cleaner transport modes and cleaner energy sources.
- The COREALIS Innovation Incubator Scheme, aiming to make the port the epicentre of the local industrial landscape and support the growth of local entrepreneur SMEs and startups.
The proposed framework is expected to improve significantly the terminal operations efficiency and reduce operational port costs such as congestion, waiting and idle times. Furthermore, it aims to minimise the environmental footprint by reducing congestion around the ports and CO2 emissions of ports to the city. Finally, the proposed framework fosters sustainable growth for ports by decreasing the disturbance to local communities while at the same time establishing efficient connections with the hinterland transport network and green-transport modes.
PIXEL
A Port IoT Solution for environmental leverage
The available operational data in ports (resources tracking, container status, vessel operations, surface or berth available, air/water quality measurements) is constantly increasing and technology is getting inexpensive and widely available. However, the application of such systems is still single-entity centric, since the information is not shared, keeping the real potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) hidden. Furthermore, an effective integration of operational data is far from optimal in most ports, and especially so in medium or small ports, where budget is limited and IT services usually is outsourced.
PIXEL enables a two-way collaboration of ports, multimodal transport agents and cities for optimal use of internal and external resources, sustainable economic growth and environmental impact mitigation, towards the Ports of the Future. PIXEL will leverage technological enablers to voluntary exchange data among ports and stakeholders, thus ensuring a measurable benefit in this process. The main outcome of this technology will be efficient use of resources in ports, sustainable development and green growth of ports and surrounding cities/regions.
Built on top of the state-of-the art interoperability technologies, PIXEL will centralise data from the different information silos where internal and external stakeholders store their operational information. PIXEL leverages an IoT based communication infrastructure to voluntarily exchange data among ports and stakeholders to achieve
an efficient use of resources in ports.
DocksTheFuture
Defining the concept of “Port of the Future”
DocksTheFuture will receive, from the European Commission, a contribution of about 1.2 million Euros, to define the Port of the Future, meant as a near future (2030), which should face challenges related to simplification and digitalisation of processes, dredging, emission reduction, energy transition, electrification, smart grids, port-city interface and the use
of renewable energy management.
Considering the long-term experience of its staff in European projects, Circle leads a working group consisting of academic partners (Institut für Seeverkehrswirtschaft und Logistik – ISL in Bremen, Germany and University of Genoa, Italy) and of consulting companies Magellan (Portugal) and PortExpertise (Belgium). The proposal addressed a preliminary research on the Port of Future concept, the definition of several Port of the Future topics to be addressed and their related targets in 2030 and a preliminary list of projects that could be potentially clustered together with the RIA
(“Research and Innovation Actions”) retained proposals.
In particular, DocksTheFuture:
Refines and tunes the Port of Future concepts, the Port of the Future topics and their related targets in 2030 and the list of projects to be clustered together with the PortForward, PIXEL and Corealis projects
Identifies appropriate KPIs (“Key Performance Indicators”) and relevant monitoring and evaluation of action results
Leads to the “Port of the Future Road Map for 2030” that includes a number of exploitation elements, such as tools for evaluation and transferability of Port of the Future solutions, R&D and policy recommendations, training packages and the creation of a “Port of the Future Network of Excellence”.
DocksTheFuture Project – which started in January 2018 and will run for 30 months until June, 30th, 2020 – entails a Communication and Dissemination Plan addressing all TEN-T Core and Comprehensive Ports and main port stakeholders. DocksTheFuture will contribute to the European Union’s policy to increase the integration of maritime transport and TEN-T Ports into the global logistics chain.
Port of the Future Network
Implementing new port concepts, new management models, innovative design and operation technologies solution.
Developing Ports of the Future to be smarter, greener and more interconnected.
Enabling Ports of the Future to handle their future capacity with a positive environmental and societal footprint.
Defining the concept of the Port of the Future and its challenges related to simplification and digitalisation of processes, energy transition, smart grids, port-city interface and the use of renewable energy management.
Bringing every port a step closer to the Port of the Future.