Ports are critical hubs for global economies, serving as gateways for international trade, economic growth, and industrial development. They facilitate the movement of goods, raw materials, and energy resources, ensuring supply chain efficiency and market connectivity. Beyond trade, ports drive blue growth by supporting maritime industries such as fisheries, aquaculture, tourism, and offshore energy, contributing to sustainable economic development. Their role in food security is significant, as they enable the import and export of agricultural products, fisheries, and essential commodities, ensuring stable food supplies worldwide. Furthermore, ports are major centers for job creation, providing employment in shipping, logistics, infrastructure development, and associated service industries. As strategic economic assets, ports play a crucial role in fostering regional and global economic resilience, innovation, and environmental sustainability through advancements in digitalization and green technologies.
However, port authorities face a range of complex challenges, both current and emerging, as they navigate an evolving economic, environmental, and technological landscape. Congestion and capacity constraints remain critical concerns, particularly as global trade volumes continue to rise, necessitating infrastructure upgrades and digitization efforts. Environmental sustainability is another pressing issue, with increasing pressure to reduce carbon emissions, improve energy efficiency, and mitigate the ecological impact of port operations. Climate change poses additional risks, as rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and coastal erosion threaten port infrastructure and disrupt supply chains. Furthermore, port authorities must adapt to shifting geopolitical dynamics, regulatory changes, and evolving security threats, including cyber risks and illicit trade activities. Balancing economic growth with environmental and social responsibility, while integrating innovative technologies such as automation and digital twins, will be essential for the future resilience and competitiveness of ports.
Ports and shipping contribute significantly to environmental degradation, particularly in Europe. The shipping sector is responsible for approximately 1,000 megatonnes (Mt) of CO₂ emissions annually, accounting for about 3% of global CO₂ emissions. If left unchecked, these emissions could rise by 50% by mid-century, making shipping a substantial contributor to climate change. Under a business-as-usual scenario, shipping could represent up to 10% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 if other sectors decarbonize at a faster pace.
Beyond greenhouse gas emissions, shipping also significantly impacts air and water quality. The sector is a major source of air pollutants such as sulfur oxides (SOₓ) and nitrogen oxides (NOₓ), which contribute to acid rain and respiratory illnesses. European shipping emissions have now exceeded pre-pandemic levels, with cargo, container ships, LNG carriers, and cruise ships being the primary culprits of rising emissions. Additionally, ports are a key source of water pollution due to oil spills, wastewater discharge, and the release of toxic substances such as heavy metals, all of which negatively affect marine biodiversity.
In Europe, port authorities are governed by an extensive regulatory framework that aligns with the EU’s broader sustainability, digitalization, and economic integration goals. The EU Port Services Regulation (2017/352) establishes common rules for financial transparency, market access, and fair competition within European ports. Additionally, the EU Green Deal and its related Fit for 55 package set ambitious decarbonization targets, requiring ports to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through cleaner energy sources, alternative fuels, and onshore power supply for vessels. The upcoming FuelEU Maritime initiative and Revised Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR) will further drive the transition towards low-emission maritime transport. Moreover, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and EU Taxonomy Regulation will impose stricter sustainability reporting requirements on port authorities and operators. As part of the TEN-T (Trans-European Transport Network) policy, European ports must enhance connectivity, multimodal integration, and digital transformation. With these evolving regulations and policy objectives, European port authorities must invest in green infrastructure, embrace digital innovations, and strengthen resilience to maintain compliance and competitiveness in the global maritime industry.
Thus, improvements that port authorities can tackle in alignment with EU policies can be summarized as follows:
- Safety and Navigation: The increase in vessel traffic and adverse weather conditions elevate the risk of collisions and accidents, necessitating real-time monitoring of dynamic port environments to ensure safe navigation.
- Environmental Compliance: Strict regulations regarding ballast water management, emissions, and pollution require ports to monitor and mitigate the environmental impacts of their activities diligently.
- Operational Efficiency: Ports must address bottlenecks in scheduling and ship movements, managing congestion during peak traffic periods to maintain seamless operations.
- Data Integration and Standardization: The lack of standardized and interoperable systems for data sharing across ports and regions hinders collaborative efforts and efficient management.
Iliad Digital Twin Solutions
The Iliad digital twin technologies are being leveraged to optimize port management strategies, making them more cost-effective, socially responsible, environmentally sustainable, and secure. The session will provide actionable insights into how ports can harness digital twin solutions to achieve operational excellence, meet European policy objectives, and improve resilience against risks.
Cost-Effectiveness in Port Management:
- Digital twins enable real-time monitoring and predictive analytics, leading to better resource allocation, maintenance optimization, and cost savings in port operations. By simulating port operations, ports can reduce downtime, optimise shipping schedules, and improve supply chain efficiency.
Improving Social, Economic, and Environmental Aspects:
- Digital twins are powerful tools for integrating multiple parameters—such as marine spatial planning, socio-economic factors, and environmental considerations—into decision-making processes. This enables ports to manage better interactions with surrounding ecosystems and communities.
- One example is the ability of digital twins to model spatial interactions between shipping lanes, marine protected areas, and local fishing zones, ensuring compliance with marine spatial planning frameworks like the Marine Spatial Planning Directive (2014/89/EU). Additionally, they can incorporate citizen science data—such as water quality measurements collected by local communities or stakeholders—into the port’s operational models, enhancing engagement with the public and ensuring more accurate environmental monitoring.
- Ports can also monitor the socio-economic impact of their activities by embedding indicators related to local employment, community health, or economic development into digital twin platforms, contributing to improved social outcomes aligned with Directive 2008/56/EC (Marine Strategy Framework Directive), which focuses on achieving Good Environmental Status (GES) of the EU’s marine waters.
Enhancing Risk Assessment and Security:
- Digital twins improve risk management practices, enhance navigational safety, and reduce human and environmental accidents. These technologies offer predictive capabilities that can forecast potential incidents based on historical data and real-time conditions. For instance, by simulating weather patterns and traffic flows, ports can improve navigational safety, thereby reducing the risk of accidents or spills.
- Digital twins also aid in ensuring compliance with security directives such as Directive 2005/65/EC (Port Security Directive), enhancing the ability to track and manage threats to port infrastructure through detailed simulations of emergency scenarios.
Image: Risk Assessment Environment for Maritime Traffic Managers
Supporting European Policy Objectives:
- Digital twins play a crucial role in helping ports meet a variety of European directives and policy goals. Specifically, they can support the European Green Deal by enabling ports to meet emissions reduction targets, improve air quality, and optimize energy use through advanced modelling and simulation.
- Digital twins align with the Destination Earth Initiative, a major EU project focused on providing digital twins for climate adaptation and risk management, as well as supporting the Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC), by offering a precise, data-driven approach to managing water quality and biodiversity preservation in port areas.
Data Integration and Standardization:
- Iliad provides interoperable data platforms that facilitate seamless data sharing across ports and regions, promoting collaborative efforts and standardized operations. This also facilitates the programme of Destination Earth and ocean digitization efforts.
Services offered
The ILIAD Digital Twin of the Ocean (DTO) offers innovative solutions to assist port authorities in overcoming these challenges:
Coastal Crete: Ship routing and Harbor Safety
Provides to users advanced, high-resolution forecasting services, enhanced by the integration of real-time in-situ observations, allowing the simulation of (what-if) predictive scenarios. Offers real-time high-resolution wave and weather forecasting tools for safe navigation and optimal ship routing tools to optimize fuel consumption, traffic flow and reduce delays caused by adverse conditions.
The DT provides capabilities for calculating optimal ship routes, designed to minimize cumulative distance, travel time, and CO2 emissions. This tool uses VISIR-2 software (created by CMCC, Italy) and leverages advanced algorithms to determine the most efficient paths for vessels, offering real-time and predictive insights. The results are seamlessly visualized through the GeoMachine platform, enabling users to interact with and adjust routes based on dynamic marine conditions.
Additionally, it provides high-resolution wave forecasting, using a 50-meter spatial resolution model to deliver accurate 3-day wave forecasts. This model, based on the SWAN model, predicts wave heights and directions critical for safe harbor operations. The forecasts are visualized through the ADAM platform, providing users with a powerful tool for monitoring and decision-making, ensuring safety and efficiency in harbor management and coastal navigation. Both applications are designed to meet the operational needs of global maritime industries, and integrate Hydromast sensor data from the port of Heraklion in order to be triggered when severely adverse weather conditions affect the area. Swan model docker is available through Iliad's dedicated Github repository SWAN, Github repository Ship routing and the application packages are available through INESCTEC unified catalogue of application packages. CWL for ship routing , as well as CWL for SWAN 50m in Heraklion Port.
AR/VR Blind Navigation of Marine Vessels in Varna Port Complex
The tool contributes to increasing the number of days the Varna Port remains open or partially open for operations, even during unfavorable weather conditions (fog, winds, heavy show, heavy rain, etc.) by aiding navigation into and out of port using augmented and virtual reality capabilities.
Risk Assessment Environment for Maritime Traffic Managers
Provides advanced risk assessment tools for managing vessel movements and predicting potential conflicts, environmental monitoring systems to ensure adherence to local and international regulations and tools for enhanced decision-making through integrated data visualization dashboards. Risk Assessment Environment for Maritime Traffic Managers offers various tools in support of the daily activities of maritime traffic managers. These tools support the risk assessment procedure and estimate the combined risk associated with ship profile and load, maneuver type, local weather conditions etc. The Risk Assessment Environment helps to improve the safety of operations in the Varna Port Complex and increase the number of days during which the Varna Port Complex remains open (or partially open) for operations, even during unfavorable weather conditions.
I see sea (ICC)
The "I-see-sea" (ICC) citizen science web-app is a tool in support of citizen science communities concerned with environment protection, marine ecosystems preservation, and well being of society.
The citizen reported observations include mereological conditions, extreme meteorological events, pollution in the sea or on the coast, jellyfish congregations, and other observations. The data collected are reported in real time on a map so that everybody concerned can use these observations. The citizen-reported data are processed and used as part of the risk assessment process for improving the safety of harbors.
