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Port IoT for Environmental Leverage

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PIXEL (Port IoT for Environmental Leverage)

Reporting period: 2019-11-01 to 2021-09-30

Available operational data in ports are constantly increasing and technology is getting inexpensive and widely available. However, an effective integration of operational data is far from optimal in most ports, and especially so in medium or small ports, where budget is limited and IT services usually is outsourced. PIXEL enables a two-way collaboration of ports, multimodal transport agents and cities for optimal use of internal and external resources, sustainable economic growth and environmental impact mitigation, towards the Port of the Future. PIXEL has leveraged technological enablers to voluntary exchange data among ports and stakeholders.

PIXEL objectives have been:
O1: Enable the IoT-based connection of port resources, transport agents and city sensor networks
O2: Achieve an automatic aggregation, homogenization and semantic annotation of multi-source heterogeneous data from internal and external actors
O3: Develop an operational management dashboard to enable a quicker, more accurate and in-depth knowledge of port operations
O4: Model and simulate port-operations processes for automated optimization
O5: Develop predictive algorithms
O6: Develop a methodology for quantifying, validating, interpreting and integrating all environmental impacts of port activities into a single metric called PEI
O7: Develop guidelines for mitigating possible environmental and health effects of port activities

Regarding its importance for society, the impacts of the project are noticeable from both the environmental and operational perspective.

As a conclusion, PIXEL has reached its committed objectives, delivering a combination of technology and methodology that has resulted in four products: BDE, MDA, PAS and PEI that have covered the analysed requirements. An IoT-powered platform has been devised, implemented and deployed in the four ports of the project. In addition, a variety of models and predictive algorithms have been applied.
WORK PLAN, COORDINATION AND DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT:
• Execution of the different administrative and financial activities through various collaborative tools
• Submission of all the deliverables in due date, delays have always been justified and agreed with the PO
• Performance of two amendments to the original GA
• Interaction with AB to obtain guidance
• Successful conclusion and closure of the project
REQUIREMENTS AND USE-CASES:
• Full analysis of market and of environmental aspects for ports
• Full definition of requirements, use-case and scenarios
• Use of requirements tracking feature (in JIRA) to match the requirements
MODELLING, PROCESS ANALYSIS AND PREDICTIVE ALGORITHMS:
• All models and predictive algorithms were fully developed and encapsulated as Dockerised models
• Soil and water pollution models were also tackled
PORT ENVIRONMENTAL INDEX DEVELOPMENT:
• The eKPIs of environmental aspects of port operation have been assessed and proposed
• Different approaches for assessing uncertainty and sensitivity analyses related to the PEI algorithm
• Manual of PEI adoption (operational and practical)
• Interviews with external ports gathering feedback about potential environmental metrics adoption
• Full development of PEI as a model
ENABLING ICT INFRASTRUCTURE FRAMEWORK:
• SotA study and technology selection
• Development of architecture components in two versions (v1 and v2): DAL, IH, OT, Dashboard and Security
• Several NGSI agents for ports
PILOT TRIALS, INTEGRATION, DEPLOYMENT AND EVALUATION:
• Devise and follow of a Pilot validation methodology
• Full development of NGSI agents of the different pilots
• New sensors purchased, installed and integrated for PIXEL
• All pilots completed
ASSESSMENT AND EXPANSION PLAN:
• Evaluation of the technical impact assessment of the PIXEL platform based on Square methodology, and assessment of the PIXEL use-cases via customised qualitative questionnaires forming KPIs derived from the TAM3 and the AIMQ models
• Evaluation of the business and economic impact of PIXEL in each one of the ports
• Evaluation of the impact of PIXEL in pilot ports based on the results of the models and services deployed
• Creation of a PIXEL asset list to showcase offer
EXPLOITATION, DISSEMINATION AND COMMUNICATION:
• Effective communication materials (2 leaflets, 3 posters and 38 videos)
• Publication of 12 congress/conference proceedings papers and 8 journal papers
• Presentation of PIXEL in 39 events.
• More than 15 joint dissemination actions with PoF projects
• Elaboration of detailed Exploitation Plan including Business Models
• List and description of KERs and the 4 final products of PIXEL: PAS, PEI, MDA and BDE
• Agreement on founding an NGO to exploit and continue PIXEL results: the PIXEL Association
PIXEL has gone beyond the SotA by targeting the integration among stakeholders involved in ports’ environmental impacts and facilitate critical decision-making supported on available data. Usage of IoT platforms and legacy data have been instrumental enablers to address complex problems that required heterogeneous data sources and systems. Enabling IoT integration and interoperability in a single PIXEL platform sparked new applications and business opportunities (e.g. new COVID-19 pilot) that helped support the requirements to deploy the Port of the Future. A summary of the impacts achieved by PIXEL is as follows:

Impact 1. Reduction of impact on climate change and the environment of port activities (PEI).
• The models implemented in the framework of PIXEL, especially the PEI, assist in the reduction of the environmental footprints of the port by creating a virtuous circle of improvement: acquire information on the current situation; facilitate the search for ways of improvement or breaks and to allow the impact to be estimated; check the impact after implementation. The 4 pilot ports reported similar environmental benefits.

Impact 2. Reduction of operational and infrastructural costs
• Operational costs have already been decreased in two pilot ports (PPA and ThPA). Further optimisation is expected in the operational costs of all 4 ports, should the PIXEL platform be enhanced and achieve a proper operation for a longer period of time.

Impact 3. Improvement of logistics efficiency
• PAS, ETA and ETD predictions from PIXEL have helped improve the organisation of shutdowns and monitoring of stopover times in the lookout for optimization of operations.
• With the PAS tool ports have been able to model their supply chains and make estimations in terms of different parameters (energy consumption, pollution emission, etc.) that allow them to better manage their logistics processes.

Impact 4. Better integration of the port in the surrounding socio-economic area, including city-port relations and the smart urban development of Port Cities
• Besides the PEI, the implementation of the PIXEL Platform has already increased the number of different virtual entities (measures) exchanged between ports and cities
• Environmental models (noise, air pollution) help better understand the impact on port and city areas and take mitigations measures

Impact 5. Large scale adoption of the PIXEL solution and approach
• The COVID pilot proved the capacity of PIXEL to expand its use to other fields (social distance monitoring).
• A transferability methodology has been produced, aligned with the CSA DTF Transferability Analysis
• 6 external ports engaged in the transferability process
PIXEL concept
PIXEL architecture enhanced
PIXEL Product - BDE
PIXEL schema
PIXEL Product - PAS
PIXEL Producs overview
PIXEL Product - PEI
PIXEL pilots
PIXEL architecture
PIXEL Advisory Board opinions