Valencia, 9 August 2022. – Last June, the kick-off meeting of the DT4GS – Digital Twins for Green Shipping project was held in Athens, an innovative initiative to apply digital twin technology which aims to transform the maritime transport sector by contributing to improving its efficiency and reducing carbon emissions.

DT4GS is a project coordinated by Inlecom with the active participation of the Fundación Valenciaport and its spin-off SEAPort Solutions.

This initiative, which has a total budget of €6,987,331 co-funded by the Horizon Europe Programme, will enable the maritime transport sector to adopt the full spectrum of digital twin innovations to support green and smart shipping in the modernisation of the current fleet as well as in the construction of new vessels. DT4GS will cover the entire lifecycle of vessels, from planning, design, construction, operation, modernisation, to scrapping.

Although DT4GS applications will focus on shipping companies, it will also provide a decarbonisation decision support system for the entire industry, including shipyards, equipment manufacturers, port authorities and operators, river commissions, classification societies, charterers and infrastructure companies.

The project will develop twin digital representations of real ships which will then be tested and validated in four Living Labs with different ship types (tankers, containers, bulk carriers and ROPAX) with the aim of optimising everything from navigation, machinery and hull, to energy management.

DT4GS has a duration of 36 months and involves 21 partners from 9 countries (Italy, Belgium, France, Ireland, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Poland, Greece and Spain), including specialists and associations from the shipping industry, shipowners, suppliers of digital twins for maritime transport, universities and research centres.

Fundación Valenciaport will coordinate the Living Labs work package, fundamental to feed back the digital model; it will drive the project’s cluster and define the collaborative models with ports and other stakeholders in the sector.