• SpiderTech won the first prize, awarded by the Juan Arizo Serrulla Foundation, and the prize for the most energy sustainable solution, awarded by Naturgy. The second and third prizes, provided by The Whiteam and Propeller Valencia, went to Proteo PESS and eSeaGuard, respectively.
• This year’s prizes totalled 8,000 euros.
• At the event, solutions were sought for 3 interesting challenges on sustainability, safety and security, and cybersecurity, posed by Bergé, Valencia Terminal Europa and Autoridad Portuaria de Valencia together with the IDF Association, respectively.

08/07/2024. Yesterday, July 7th, the final defence of the projects developed during this weekend was held in the IV Valenciaport Hackathon, an event organised by Opentop, the innovation hub of Valenciaport, which has also counted with the experience in hackathons of Innova & Acción, and with the co-funding of the National Institute of Cybersecurity (INCIBE).

In this fourth edition, three interesting challenges were addressed: one related to sustainability, proposed by Bergé, which challenged participants to find solutions to reduce the fuel consumption of heavy machinery in the port operations of a terminal; a second challenge related to safety and security, proposed by Valencia Terminal Europa, which sought measures against fires in electric vehicles stored in port facilities; and, finally, a challenge related to cybersecurity in the port environment, posed by the Port Authority of Valencia (APV) together with the IDF Association, which requested the monitoring and situational analysis of Valenciaport in the dark web to automate the generation of alerts on cyber attacks.

During the closing ceremony of the hackathon, the 9 participating teams presented their proposals to a professional jury and the public present. After the jury’s deliberation, the winners of the 4 prizes totalling €8,000 were announced.

The main prize, a €3,000 cash prize awarded by the Juan Arizo Serrulla Foundation (FJAS), was awarded to the Ceto team, whose members came up with a solution to the challenge proposed by Valencia Terminal Europa – the “SpiderTech” project – which also won the special prize of €2,000 for the most energy sustainable solution, awarded by Naturgy.

The Spider Tech project proposes three phases as a solution to the challenge of “fire prevention of electric cars stored in port facilities”. For the first phase, prevention, a Spider Cam has been designed with sensors that continuously measure the gases emitted and the increase in temperature in the facilities, and in the event of detecting any anomaly, it would activate the extinguishing phase. In this second phase, the pipes installed in the “silo” would be used to spray water and the F500 component on the vehicles parked in the port facilities. Finally, in the prediction and control phase, all the data recorded by the sensors would be stored in order to visualise the chronological evolution of the temperature and gases emitted, and with the help of AI to be able to predict the hot or problematic points.

The second prize, €2,000 provided by The Whiteam, was awarded to the project “Proteo PESS: Potential Energy Storage System“, a solution by the Proteo team to the challenge posed by Bergé.

The Proteo PESS solution aims to solve the challenge of reducing the fuel consumption of heavy machinery in a terminal’s port operations by means of a tower system that harnesses the potential energy of the cargo itself to make a slow and controlled descent of the cargo while the next batch is being hoisted. In this way, they manage to reduce fuel consumption during the crane’s ascent, which is when it makes the greatest effort and therefore consumes the most.

The third prize, €1,000 provided by the Propeller Valencia Association of logistics managers and entrepreneurs, was awarded to the “eSeaGuard” project by the Thalassa team, a solution to the challenge posed by the Port Authority of Valencia together with the IDF Association of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.

The Thalassa team has solved the challenge “Cybersecurity in a port environment based on the monitoring and situational analysis of Valenciaport in the dark web to automate the generation of alerts on cyber attacks” by using a web scrapper in the Dark Web, an application that extracts information from websites, using an artificial intelligence model, different warnings are issued when the use of one of these keywords related to a potential cyber-threat is detected. These warnings are displayed both in an interactive control panel and in a chat application that can also be consulted for any details of the threat.

Development of the Hackathon

For three days, the 45 participants in the IV Valenciaport Hackathon developed innovative solutions in response to the challenges posed. To do so, they have had the advice and support of expert mentors in ports and foreign trade from the collaborating entities, APM Terminals and Infoport; as well as from the challenging entities and Fundación Valenciaport, promoter of the Opentop initiative.

Throughout the weekend, different workshops focused on creativity and idea generation, prototyping, business model canvas, and pitch (or short presentation) that have been guiding participants with techniques to finish their proposals successfully.

In addition, two Keynote Sessions were held. On Friday, the session was given by Nuria Lloret, deputy director of the IDF Association for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, an expert in innovation and entrepreneur who presented the INCIBE Emprende programme. On Saturday, Javier Moreno, director of sustainability at Bergé, shared his extensive experience on the origins and current situation of sustainability and how to apply it in the logistics-port sector.

The activities took place in the emblematic Clock Building of the Port of Valencia itself, and also included a visit to the port enclave to learn about its infrastructure and operation.

In addition, on Sunday after the awards ceremony, a networking session was held for all participants, the partners who launched the challenges and prize partners already mentioned, collaborating companies such as APM Terminals and Infoport and other entities that have supported the initiative such as Invest In Valencia, Startup Valencia, Valencia City Council and Valencia Innovation Capital, as well as invited professionals from the sector.

Jury of the IV Valenciaport Hackathon

The jury of the III Valenciaport Hackathon was made up of representatives of the companies responsible for the challenges, the organisation and Fundación Valenciaport: Salvador Furió, Deputy Director of Fundación Valenciaport; Lorena Ballester, Vice-President of Propeller Valencia; Julián Moreno, IT Director of Valencia Terminal Europa; Juan Carlos García, Director of Cybersecurity at Bergé; Luis Agustín, Head of Cybersecurity at APV; Carmen López, Innovation Ecosystems and Scouting at Naturgy; Marta Renedo, Director of Innova&Acción; and Karina Virrueta, Head of Innovation Ecosystem at Startup Valencia.

What is Opentop?

Opentop is the open innovation initiative of Fundación Valenciaport, which seeks to generate growth and opportunities in the port logistics sector of Valencia, bringing together companies, entrepreneurs and startups with different actions such as this IV Valenciaport Hackathon.

The Opentop team, after successfully closing this IV Valenciaport Hackathon, continues to seek and generate projects and alliances with all those partners in the port-logistics sector who want to develop open innovation projects.

On the website opentop.es you can learn more about the initiative.