The Role of Emerging ICT in the Ports: Increasing Utilities According to Shared Decisions

Abstract

Geographical location, infrastructures, and services are the main consolidated pillars of a port in terms of its capacity to compete and cooperate with other ports. In the last years, a new pillar was identified: emerging technologies. Ports’ issues were initially solved with individual ICT solutions adopted by each decision-maker, which generated efficiencies in the three main port flows: cargo, information, and financial. However, new benefits and challenges are connected with the introduction of shared emerging ICT among decision-makers inside ports. The crucial issue concerns the fact that several decision-makers could share a decision about a single-port operation. Therefore, the effectiveness and efficiency of ports depend on how the interactions between the decision-makers are solved. Port operations are associated with movements (cargo) and transactions (information and financial) in a synchronic graph, which allows highlighting the role of emerging technologies in the modification of port operation generalized cost, considering the different decision-makers. The focal point concerns the building of a theoretical model using the formal equations of Transport System Models (TSMs) for the estimation of the cost for a Unit of Load (UL), e.g., a container traveling along a path, composed of a sequence of port operations, inside a port with and without emerging technologies. The proposed theoretical model provides the possibility of estimating ex ante the reduction of cost (port time of UL) given by introducing new technologies and a Port Community System (PCS). Different scenarios, considering some cases, ranging from the absence of ICT to the presence of a PCS, are compared, considering the different situations from a non-congested port to a congested one. The main results of the study and its novelty concern, on the one hand, the extension of TSMs to port systems, highlighting the problem of a non-single decision-maker (two or more) in some port operations and, on the other hand, the possibility of reducing the generalized cost (e.g., time) in the same operations in which there are concurrent decision-makers, through the use of an advanced PCS. The reported numerical example confirms the theoretical results. The work can be useful for researchers for port planners (e.g., port authorities) because it permits evaluating the utility for introducing shared emerging technologies using advanced PCS in a unified view.

Emerging Information and Communication Technologies: the Challenges for the Dynamic Freight Management in City Logistics

“…In city logistics, this is not an exception, and the tendency to use electronic collaboration is increasing day by day. Therefore, the future research directions should be devoted toward the development of an integrated platform for innovative city logistics, creating unified space for all the stakeholders with the emerging technologies like the ones built in the port communities with the Port Community System (PCS; Moros-Daza et al, 2020;Russo and Musolino, 2021). The city logistics community system could be defined as an interorganizational system used for enabling commercial services and providing information exchange between the freight receivers (e.g., end consumers and retailers) and a variety of actors, such as transport and logistics operators (e.g., carriers and couriers), among others, under the rules defined by public administrations.…”

Emerging Ict and Port Community Systems: A Survey of Scientific Literature

“…However, it was not possible to associate the PCS described to any specific wave. [21], [25]  Logistics and transport (L&T): logistics and transport of goods from land to sea (and vice versa) by road and rail transport (short and long distances);  Customs (CU): import and export, administrative and custom control processes;  Navigation (NA), management and planning of ship arrivals and departures;  Dangerous goods (DG), traffic of dangerous goods, and related procedures.…”

“…Today fifth generation of ports is characterized by the use of emerging information and communication technologies (ICT) in the interaction between port stakeholders. The introduction of emerging ICT inside ports has shown that ICT is a further pillar of port competitiveness alongside the traditional ones as the port closeness to the cities or to the industrial plants, and the capacity to generate added value, the dotation of infrastructures and shared services (see Russo and Musolino [21], [22] and references included).…”

“…The dissemination of potentialities offered by emerging ICT was made possible by the capabilities of Port Community Systems (PCSs). The role of emerging ICT in the ports was presented in Russo and Musolino [21], in terms of assessment of stakeholders' utilities in sharing decisions about port operations. Some case studies of emerging ICT in ports operations are reported in Russo and Musolino [22], with a focus on internet-of-things.…”

Risk Reduction in Transport System in Emergency Conditions: A Framework for Supply Analysis

“…), influencing the behaviour of people at individual and collective way. Some applications are proposed in the field of city logistics [25] and of ports and maritime transport [26], [27].…”