Fourth Portopia workshop in Bremen
08 May 2015
On 29 April, Bremen Ports kindly hosted the first Portopia event of 2015. The workshop took place back to back with the meeting of the Economic Analysis and Statistics Committee of ESPO. Representatives of the European Commission, of port authorities and Portopia research partners attended the workshop and jointly contributed to the progress of Portopia.
Participants could assess the approach to collect and monitor the figures of modal split of ports. Methodologies used across EU ports are very different, and the goal of Portopia is not to uniform those but rather to provide a framework for meaningful analysis and monitoring of trends. Some preliminary assessment done by Portopia shows that for several ports analysed, rail shares consistently outperform the country averages. This confirms that ports are promoters of sustainable transport. Participants could also learn about the first steps set to develop a port traffic forecasting tool.
In addition, many ports currently do not calculate or report employment or added value on a regular basis. On this area, Portopia is developing a methodology to provide estimates for the socio-economic impact of ports. To test the methodology, estimates of employment for each of the participant ports were provided and were compared with actual figures.
Not least, Portopia partners explained the vision of what Portopia needs to deliver. Portopia intends to develop products and services on the basis of a set of stand-alone “dashboards” integrating multiple objectives of port cluster performance. Four functionalities will be available for each of the dashboards: Data collection, Data analysis, Dashboards and Reporting. Partners are working on defining a dashboard for the following dimensions:
- Market developments and intelligence
- Connectivity and logistic chain performance dashboard
- Environmental, safety, health and security dashboard
- (Corporate) governance and financial dashboard
- Cluster competitiveness as experienced by users tool
- Socio-economic development toolkit and dashboard
The Portopia project, which is co-funded by the European Commission, is almost half way. ESPO is also grateful for the continued support and effort of its membership to make Portopia a successful initiative. Acknowledging all the challenges linked to the diversity of the port sector, ESPO remains committed to support Portopia in delivering a useful and valuable tool for learning and self-improvement of the port industry.
The Portopia consortium also wishes to express its gratitude to Ports of Bremen for the magnificent hospitality and interesting port tour in Bremerhaven that preceded the event.
For more information on Portopia objectives and progress, please visit the Portopia website or contact portopia@espo.be.
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