The initiative is led by the Port of Barcelona and features collaboration from the most innovative ports in the world: Antwerp, Busan, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Montreal and Rotterdam.
Port of Barcelona President Damià Calvet and Director of Innovation and Business Strategy Emma Cobos presented the third Smart Ports: Piers of the Future, a Port of Barcelona-led initiative featuring collaboration from Antwerp, Busan, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Montreal and Rotterdam – some of the most prominent ports in the field of innovation, which will make public some of their most innovative projects. The 2021 event will see participation from the ports of London and Gothenburg, which will share their respective experiences in energy transition and multimodality.
This year’s Smart Ports: Piers of the Future will shine a light on the five SMART attributes – sustainability, multimodality, agility, resilience and transparency – that should characterise an advanced and competitive logistic hub under the Fourth Strategic Plan of the Port of Barcelona 2021-2025.
The President of the Port of Barcelona stressed that “Smart Ports has established itself as a meeting point for the ports that are leading the world in innovation and which share with us the idea that this innovation must be sustainable, open and collaborative”. President Calvet pointed out that Smart Ports is part of the Smart City Expo World Congress and one of two sponsors of SCEWC’s Àgora, paving the way for discussion around smart ports to feature within the Smart City programme as well.
To that effect, the President described Smart Ports as an example “of how those responsible for the world’s most innovative ports – corporate leaders, public representatives, business managers, experts and academics – can collaborate, share experiences and best practices and learn from each other to move forward together in decarbonisation, digital transformation and more resilient, competitive and inclusive infrastructure design”.
Port of Barcelona Director of Innovation and Business Strategy Emma Cobos stressed that the nine projects presented at this year’s event “combine innovative and sustainable solutions aimed at making maritime transport and port operations more competitive while also working to reduce their impact on the environment”. She added that another central feature of the Smart Ports 2021 programme would be “the port-city relationship and development of the blue economy” and highlighted the presentation of HyperPort, a project to apply the SpaceX aerospace company’s hyperloop technology to freight transport.
For its part, the Port of Barcelona has chosen to present two projects at Smart Ports: Piers of the Future. The first is an innovative geolocation solution based on 5G technology and artificial intelligence. The second, the first of its kind in a state port, is an energy community pilot test at the Fisherman’s wharf energy community aiming to produce renewable energy to meet the wharf’s and other users’ consumption needs. It is a pilot test of shared self-consumption of renewable energies that optimises consumption at the Fisherman’s wharf.
In addition to the projects presented at Smart Ports, the Port of Barcelona will also participate in the Smart City programme: first, with a talk from the Deputy Director General of Innovation and Business Strategy and of the Port of Barcelona and the former President of the International Association of Ports and Harbours, Santiago Garcia-Milà, on how the new economy and environmental regulations are setting trends in ports around the world; and second, in a session on innovation with the 3D Incubator and BCN Tech HUB.
Smart Ports: Piers of the Future is part of the Smart City Expo World Congress. The event can be streamed online at https://www.smartports.tv/. Previous editions of the event marked milestones in participation: Smart Ports 2020, which was exclusively virtual, logged more than 5,700 single users and 20,000 live visits from 94 countries. This year, the forecast is to exceed 6,000 single users and to draw more people from around the world.
