Effective Operation in ports

Successfully completed project Efforts

Customer: Project funded by the European Commission FP6- FP6-SUSTDEV – Sustainable Development, Global Change and Ecosystems: thematic priority 6 under the Focusing and Integrating Community Research programme 2002-2006

European trade and economy is highly dependent on ports. The container sector is currently facing an increasing threat of terminal congestions and thus container terminals are the potential bottlenecks within the transport chain. Besides the logistics problems which will arise from container terminal congestion, European ports in general need to strengthen competitiveness by improving availability and cost-benefit ratio of services to all types of vessels, passengers and commodities.

European ports do already follow an innovative and pro-active approach; however, appropriately structured research assistance will have a lever function resulting in much higher benefits than costs. After analysing the current state of the art and requirements, concrete research objectives have been worked out and translated into the work plan of EFFORTS. The vision is rather simple: to intelligently combine selected key developments so that the overall added value is much more than the sum of individual improvements.

The terms of reference are challenging but feasible within the project duration, resulting in clearly measurable products and processes. However, searching for new solutions always includes the risk of not achieving all specified objectives.