The Port of Barcelona has long made innovation a priority in its operations, but now it has also made it the protagonist of the new edition of Smart Ports: Piers of the Future, which was held telematically from Barcelona on November 17 and 18, and had the collaboration of other innovative ports such as those of Antwerp, Busan, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Montreal, and Rotterdam. "Innovation has become a priority to advance and achieve our main challenge: to generate wealth for the community," explained the president of the Port of Barcelona, Mercè Conesa, at the inauguration of the event, dedicated to showcasing advances in digitalization and sustainability of ports.
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"Innovation and digital transformation are creating a new paradigm in all economic sectors, and ports are no exception. At the Port of Barcelona, we are convinced that we must embrace innovation and new technologies to be more efficient, more sustainable, and more competitive," Conesa argued. This was the main idea that centered the second edition of Smart Ports: Piers of the Future, which took place within the framework of the Smart City Expo World Congress, also held virtually due to the pandemic.
The international congress has gathered almost 6,000 unique users over two days and about 700 people have been connected at the same time, from the five continents. The congress has served to present 12 project spotlights and seven panel sessions have been held. Smart Ports has developed for this edition its own 100% online platform on which the event could be followed in streaming. The platform will be active all year and all the content generated during these days can be viewed again and more will be uploaded.
As Conesa has explained, the congress promoted by the Port de Barcelona is "a unique meeting point" for the entire smart city ecosystem, with the participation of executives, public representatives, entrepreneurs, experts and academics and a high level of presentations, which have been attended by the main CEOs of the most relevant ports. "They learn from each other, weave experiences, talk about best practices and open new paths for international collaboration," she remarked.
Sustainability
With the motto Thinking Ahead, Globally, the agenda of the second edition of Smart Ports has focused on the research of sustainable solutions to bring prosperity to the community and has included topics such as digital playbook, innovative technologies, cybersecurity, energy transition, smart piers cities and blockchain, among others. Projects such as Artificial Vision (Port de Barcelona), Digital Playbook: Leveraging digital solutions in crisis management (Hamburg Port Authority) and Rethinking Port Space: The Port of Montreal's Digital Twin (Port of Montreal) have also been presented.
The vision of Barcelona, Los Angeles and Hamburg
The inaugural session of this international congress featured the participation of the Deputy General Director of Strategy and Commercial of the Port of Barcelona and President of the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH), Santiago Garcia-Milà; the CEO of the Port of Hamburg, Jens Meier, and the Executive Director of the Port of Los Angeles, Gene Seroka.
Garcia-Milà has valued the relationship between cities and ports: "One cannot understand the development of a city or its history without knowing the history of its port." In this regard, he emphasized that these infrastructures create added value and wealth for cities and do so in a sustainable way, from an economic, social, and environmental point of view. Regarding how a port can contribute to improving the environmental quality of cities, Garcia-Milà indicated that there are several policies they are working on with municipal authorities to achieve this: "There are many things we can do together."
"One cannot understand the development of a city or its history without knowing the history of its port", Garcia-Milà maintains.
For his part, Meier has stressed that a smart port implies efficiency to achieve a "sustainable future defined by new technologies and the optimization of processes and existing infrastructure", while Seroka has given an example of how they have used innovation to respond to the pandemic, creating a system, Logistics Victory LA, which has allowed them to distribute personal protective equipment (PPE) to doctors. For this reason, Seroka has assured that digitalization will be one of the areas that will define the future of the infrastructure, in addition to guaranteeing the safety of its workers in this new context.
The relationship between smart ports and smart cities
As a partner of Smart City Live 2020, Smart Ports has collaborated with the congress organized by Fira de Barcelona with a panel that discussed the relationships between smart ports and smart cities. In this debate, the Head of Strategy of the Port of Barcelona, Jordi Torrent, and the Deputy Director of Goods Movement and Sustainable Freight of the Governor's Office of California, Frank Ramirez, participated; in addition to Meier (Hamburg) and Seroka (Los Angeles) again.
Torrent has advocated for moving towards smart ports to serve smart cities and, in this sense, has emphasized the importance of boosting the logistics sector in Barcelona. For the Head of Strategy of the Port of Barcelona, the Catalan capital has a powerful ecosystem of emerging companies from different sectors, but not from the logistics sector. "Port de Barcelona has an important role to play here", he explained. Likewise, on the path towards smart cities, he pointed out that it is necessary to diversify and differentiate the activity of the infrastructure, as he has assured they have been doing for years and "will go even further", to continue generating wealth and be more resilient to disruptions.
The Head of Strategy of the Port of Barcelona, Jordi Torrent, advocates for moving towards smart ports to serve smart cities.On this issue, Meier has argued that to guarantee the success of ports in the future, it is necessary to continue collaborating with local authorities and reduce polluting emissions through the use of technology and digitalization, which must also serve to train their workers. "Technology is helping us", he explained, and maintained that everyone must be convinced of the benefits it can bring, both in port logistics and in other processes.
Seroka also agreed on the need to move towards zero-emission ports, while Ramirez added the importance of exchanging knowledge among the different agents that converge in ports, both to offer a more sustainable service and also a faster and better one.