Port Digitalization Through an Activities Scenario Model as a First Step for a Digital Twin of Port
Creators: name: Garnier, Charles
name: Simon, Erwan
name: Costa, Joao Pita
name: Pitsikas, Leonidas
name: Lacalle, Ignacio
name: Palau, Carlos E.
Publisher: name: Georgia Institute of Technology
Year: 2021
Subjects: H2020 project
Digital twin
Port of the future
Port management
Decision support system
Simulation
Supply chain
Innovation web platform

description: Presented at the 8th International Physical Internet Conference (IPIC 2021) 14-16 June 2021, Virtual
description: Building on the momentum of the digitalisation of the maritime industry, the digital twin is arriving to the European ports and terminals to optimize operations and reduce costs. The technical term digital twin appears after 2010 [1] as a dynamical model which, given the current state of an observed system, is capable of a partial digital reconstruction of such a system. It got widely adopted throughout the years, especially in the context of IoT technologies and the industry 4.0 [2], as well as in healthcare to appropriately address the personalised medicine paradigm [3]. In the recent years there was a natural adoption of the approach by port authorities and container terminals [4], with the engagement of the main European ports in collaboration with the technology giants to explore several dimensions of it in this new context [5]. Though, the problems addressed by the port are much different than those in the digitalisation of a factory and, thus, need to be faced differently [6]. Data driven digital twins are still not in a general industrial practice due to the lack of AI know-how and possibly lack of relevant IoT data to reconstruct the underlying physical processes. The current marketplace for generic Digital Twin technology is not yet very mature, with key providers positioning between Bosh, IBM, Siemens, and General Electric. Most products are centred around internal businesses of the corresponding companies related to mostly IoT or manufacturing. The engineering paradigm of the Digital Twin arrives with: (i) online sensors becoming cheaper and ubiquitous; (ii) improved usefulness of Big Data analytics, processed for patterns and monitored for signals; (iii) the vast remote computing resources in the Cloud making them inexpensive and more accessible [7]. This allows businesses to reorganize organisational processes and workflows towards an improved cost-effectiveness deriving from the eminent digitalisation of the industry. Modern ports face problems revolving around the issues of efficiency, environmental and financial sustainability. The difficulties they are facing are common with those of other nodes in the logistics chain and have to do (usually) with underutilization of resources: while there are empty warehouses and idle machinery at one given moment, at another moment there are demand peaks they cannot accommodate. One of the other challenges the ports are facing nowadays is that of the social integration. Major European cities have been developed from ancient times around ports as this eased the logistics of their time. However, in our era two issues are arising: i) high volumes of cargo entering and exiting the ports from the hinterland side, thus adding to traffic in cities, ii) usage of fossil fuels for energy production and / or machinery operations adding to atmospheric and sound pollution. An additional issue connecting the two previously mentioned problems is fluctuating employment in times of fluctuating supply and demand, which is not limited only to port workers, but also to activities related to the port industry. A great number of small and medium sized ports are not sufficiently equipped to utilize data already available or easily obtainable to face previously mentioned challenges. Examples of such data are i) vessel calls data which can assist in preparations and scheduling of energy peak demands, ii) usage of environmental sensors which can assist in normalizing emissions through better scheduling of activities, iii) usage of city traffic data which can assist in normalizing port traffic generation and iv) in the future exploitation of IoT enabled sensors in networked containers that can assist in better prioritization of port activities. PIXEL platform allows to build a useful “what-if” scenario of the port activities which can be seen as an important contribution to the Digital Twin of the port paradigm. Thanks to an opensource tools called the Port Activity Scenario (PAS) based on vessel calls and use of handling equipment specifications and supply chain, PIXEL has allowed to establish an operational description of the port activities related to cargo handling. This description is composed of a set of data-model listing all the considered activities’ time series. These PAS outputs are then use as inputs for energy model or for the quantification of pollutants emissions. PAS model has been build considering needs and constraints of small and medium ports; thus becoming adaptable in terms of data availability, i.e.,working with a minimum set of data providing results of corresponding level of confidence.