València, 20 October 2022.- The Port of Valencia is the first Spanish port to test 5G technology for ship docking operations. The president of the Port Authority of Valencia (APV), Aurelio Martínez, has highlighted the role that Valenciaport is playing “in the unlimited opening to innovation as it has done in the past as a gateway to the winds of change and the generation of wealth”. The head of Valenciaport has participated in the PORTWIN event ‘5G private and radars in the Port of Valencia: Pilot for assistance to the berthing of vessels’, a solution based on 5G technology to assist in real-time decision making and increase the safety of these operations.
Aurelio Martínez explained that “in Valencia we are fortunate to have a great port that is committed to innovation to create value around innovation. We are a port that has managed to attract the main national and international customers because of our vocation for operational excellence, because of our infrastructures, but also because of our firm commitment to innovation”.
During his speech, the head of Valenciaport listed some of the initiatives developed by the APV in recent years, such as the creation of a Port Community Systems, Fundación Valenciaport or the promotion of the 4.0 Fund to help ideas and start-up projects. In addition, the projects of the new north terminal and the passenger terminal contain a very high degree of digitalisation. But innovation has also been applied to sustainable projects such as Green C Ports for sensorisation and intelligent management in order to increase the connectivity of the ports with the city and reduce the impact of port operations on it.
The president of the APV explained that as a result of this commitment to innovation, the Digital Transformation Committee is committed to implementing 5G technology in areas where this technology can provide more value, such as terminals, or in the development of pilots such as PORTWIN.
For Aurelio Martínez, “the ports are also dynamisers of the port-logistic community and of the product fabric, and it is up to us to promote innovative and value-added services in collaboration with private initiative. An action that will improve areas such as the training of human resources, quality, efficiency, sustainability, vigilance on the impact of our activity on the environment, intermodality or support for logistics centres, among others”.
The event was also attended by Albert Cuatrecasas, General Manager of Cellnex España, Héctor Donat, CEO of Fivecomm, and Antonio Torregrosa, General Manager of Fundación Valenciaport. Albert Cuatrecasas stressed that “the Port of Valencia is the first in the use of 5G in Spain, with this technology will reduce costs, time, complexity and increase security in docking operations”. Along the same lines, Héctor Donat pointed out “the Port’s great capacity for digitalisation and the use of 5G to make its facilities more sustainable”.
PORTWIN Project
This initiative stems from Valenciaport’s commitment to digitalisation and innovation as key elements for maintaining its competitiveness. The project, which is co-financed by the Agència Valenciana de la Innovació, combines cutting-edge technologies such as 5G, Edge Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Radar to digitise the ship docking operation by providing real-time assistance with highly accurate data of any ship approaching the Port of Valencia facilities.
The solution designed in PORTWIN, based on 5G smart radars, contributes to facilitate this berthing process, thanks to the real-time communication of the distance, speed and orientation of the vessels with respect to the berthing dock. This information is obtained through the use of radars, transmitted via 5G technology, processed in the Edge, and represented in an application that, thanks to its graphic interface, allows the position and distance of the vessel with respect to the dock to be visualised in real time from any device.
Through the use of this application, masters, tugs, pilots and moorers can know the position of the vessel with millimetric precision during the entire berthing phase, thus enabling more efficient decision making that contributes to optimising operations and increasing efficiency and safety in this complex process.
At today’s event, the result of the implementation of a sensorisation layer of the infrastructure for the monitoring of the assistance process for the berthing of ships was presented at the Cruceros 1 pier of the north extension, which will help in real-time decision making and increase the safety of this operation, all based on 5G technology.
The project has been presented by the technology company Fivecomm, whose technological partners are Cellnex, A4Radar, Fundación Valenciaport and the APV. In this case, Valenciaport has carried out a controlled transfer of the space in the Cruceros dock, the IT facilities at the quayside and has provided electricity supply to the pilot, with the help of the Digital Transformation department and the electricity service.
