SMALL AND MEDIUM PORTS’ ACTIVITIES MODELLING: INTRODUCTION TO THE PIXEL APPROACH

• Published in: WIT Transactions on the Built Environment Vol. 187; p. 149
• Main Authors: Simon, Erwan, Garnier, Charles, LACALLE, IGNACIO, JOAO PITA COSTA, Palau, Carlos E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Southampton W I T Press 01.01.2019
• Subjects: Clean energy; Computer simulation; Data acquisition; Data analysis; Environment models; Environmental assessment; Environmental impact; Environmental management; Interoperability; Mitigation; Modelling; Optimization; Pixels; Ports; R&D; Research & development; Sensors; Virtual sensors
• ISSN: 1746-4498; 1743-3509
• DOI: 10.2495/MT190141

Port activities undeniably have an impact on their environment, the city and citizens living nearby. To have a better understanding of these impacts, the ports of the future will require tools allowing suitable modelling, simulation and data analysis. This challenge is also tied to another current reality: the heterogeneous data coming from different stakeholders converging into ports are not optimally exploited due to lack of interoperability. Thus, the forthcoming research and development initiatives must address these demands from a holistic point of view. PIXEL (H2020-funded project) aims at creating the first smart, flexible and scalable solution reducing the environmental impact while enabling optimization of operations in port ecosystems. PIXEL brings the most innovative IoT and ICT technology to ports and demonstrate their capacity to take advantage of modern approaches. Using an interoperable open IoT platform, data is acquired and integrated into an information hub comprised of small, low-level sensors up to virtual sensors able to extract relevant data from high level services. Finally, this hub integrates smart models to analyse port processes for prediction and optimization purposes: (i) a model of consumption and energy production of the port with the aim of moving towards green energy production; (ii) a model of congestion of multi-modal transport networks to reduce the impact of port traffic on the network; and (iii) models of environmental pollution of the port to reduce the environmental impacts of the port on the city and its citizens. The main issue tackled by PIXEL is to provide interoperability between these models and allow real integration and communication in the context of an environmental management model. Besides that, PIXEL devotes to decouple port’s size and its ability to deploy environmental impact mitigation specifying an innovative methodology and an integrated metric for the assessment of the overall environmental impact of ports.