A Data Platform for the Cognitive Ports of the Future

Project Information

DataPorts

Grant agreement ID: 871493

DOI

10.3030/871493

Project closed

EC signature date 7 November 2019

Start date 1 January 2020

End date 31 March 2023

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 6 675 951,75

EU contribution

€ 5 740 586,63

Coordinated by

INSTITUTO TECNOLOGICO DE INFORMATICA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DataPorts (A Data Platform for the Cognitive Ports of the Future)

Reporting period: 2021-07-01 to 2023-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

DataPorts' goal was to provide a Data Platform in which transportation and logistics companies around a seaport can manage data like any other company asset to create the basis to offer cognitive services. The project was devoted to creating a secure data platform that allows information sharing between port agents and other ports.
DataPorts included the deployment, testing and showcase of the data platform in two relevant European ports (Valencia, Thessaloniki), where it will be connected to the existing digital platforms to collect data, provide sharing rules, and add value to data owners, and on top of which the pilots will develop AI and cognitive applications to solve specific problems and improve processes for each pilot.
Key societal impacts:
The DataPorts data platform improves operations in the shipping industry and maritime sector, contributing to the two-fold objective of consolidating the EU as a significant player in container transportation and reducing total annual GHG emissions from shipping.
Ports generate vast amounts of valuable data for other ports, logistic services, other industries, cities, local businesses, and end-users. DataPorts boosts the data economy by considering data as a tradable good and incorporating the well-identified value into the real economy.
Pilot applications have common objectives, such as reducing transit time in the port area, improving information awareness in the port community, and reducing port operational costs by improving processes.
Citizens' trust will improve as privacy-aware transparency and control features are developed in the context of the project platform.
Project primary objectives?
To address real-life data market use cases in two relevant European seaports
To design and validate next generation set of advanced interoperable data-related and AI-based services
Define an engineering methodology facilitating the application of DataPorts architecture and tools
Define and design a novel, scalable, resilient, semantic approach for data sharing
Define, design, and provide a data governance framework for the DataPorts architecture
Impact creation
Establishment of a new cooperation and business framework
Conclusions:
The project has been finalised successfully, and the results of the project have been the following:
Architecture and technical and functional specifications of the DataPorts platform
Technical implementation of the architectural components
Development of Big Data applications for port users
Demonstrators in the Valencia and Thessaloniki ports

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Coordination (WP1): Milestones and objectives have been completed on track. Tasks have been finished on time. All deliverables have been completed with no major deviations.
Data Platform Design (WP2): DataPorts platform architecture is available. The platform architecture has been aligned with the reference model proposed by IDSA. This guarantees platform follows widely accepted standards in terms of interoperability and security.
Data Platform Implementation (WP3): The platform is available, and several components have been developed: The data access and semantic interoperability, data abstract and virtualisation, process-based analytics and the automatic models training engine. These components provide the technical tools for acquiring, aggregating, processing, and analysing data.
Data Governance and Security (WP4): Data governance framework has been provided in DataPorts. The business processes for data access are achieved through smart contracts, which ensure permissioned access control. The data governance services define and enforce access rules to datasets in a transparent, verifiable, trackable, and immutable manner. In addition, the DataPorts platform was subject to a comprehensive risk assessment exercise in which the main security measures were derived and fixed.
Piloting, and evaluation (WP5): The DataPorts platform has been deployed and configured to run for the pilots where the ports of Valencia, Thessaloniki and Baleares are involved. All required mechanisms for sharing data from end to end have been configured through data source subscriptions or on-demand execution workflows. Applications have been developed for both sharing and using data as DataPorts clients.
Impact (WP6): DataPorts partners participated in major shipping events (exhibitions, business conferences) and met with future stakeholders from local communities. Platform’s components reached their final stage and were presented to future stakeholders in events where DataPorts had a presence. Moreover, based on milestones, a high percentage of the Impact KPIs have been successfully addressed.
Business and Exploitation (WP7): Various activities were carried out to define a business model and a business plan to guarantee the long-term sustainability of the DataPorts platform. The concept of an Innovation Lab was applied to the conditions of the DataPorts platform, and the result describes the DataPorts Data Lab. The commercial strategy will be complemented by means of non-commercial use, based on R&D initiatives and the open-source business model.
Overview of the results
38 results were identified, excluding data sources. The classification of the Key Exploitable Results is as follows:
• Platform core components: Reusable for every platform deployment. The main result of the project
• Cognitive applications: These AI applications address different use cases. Some of these apps are ready-to-use for other organisations of the logistic chain, and others are specific for one use case
• Data Access components: These are components from the access layer, which are not part of the platform core since they have been developed for a specific external system.
• Improved background: these existing applications increase functionality thanks to DataPorts Platform integration

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

DataPorts progresses from existing:
1. Software-defined platforms by delivering a domain-specific platform for cross-organizational data integration in the ports domain
2. Machine learning platforms by delivering domain-specific AI components that empower cognitive big data applications for connected ports.
The following concepts were key to achieving DataPorts mission:
• DataPorts offers higher-level domain-specific platform services that will significantly ease data collection, integration, cleaning, and aggregation, allowing users to concentrate on building innovative cognitive applications.
• DataPorts provides a semantic framework for describing port data and mappings to standard vocabularies to simplify the reuse of data apps for analytics and forecasting.
• Data governance services ensure a reliable source of truth that guarantees data quality, validity and veracity.
• DataPorts exploits existing solutions to deliver smart data while adding domain-specific services.
• The blockchain technology used by DataPorts will facilitate those data owners to remain in full control of their data.
The expected impacts follow the objectives of the ICT13-2019: “Supporting the emergence of data markets and the data economy” call to address the strategic high-level goals set by the European Union as well as practical stakeholders’ and end users’ needs related to data platforms, data markets and the data economy.
The expected DataPorts outcomes align with the strategic high-level goals set by the EU strategic research in the area of data economy and those presented in the Data Markets Strategic Research Roadmap.

dataports-overview.png