Towards a flexible, smart port

“Everyone in de logistics chain must be able to get an answer to their questions at any time. Where is my cargo? Are my declarations in order? Where can I find transport capacity? Who can I cooperate with? And so on… With this ambition, we have drawn up the 2015 – 2019 Business Plan and entitled it ‘Together with the community innovate towards integral planning’,” says Manager Strategy & Innovation, Marten van der Velde. “Our ambition for the coming years is to link together as many parties and as much information as possible and to intelligently integrate data.” The new business plan has been approved by the Supervisory Board and the shareholders, the Port of Rotterdam Authority and the Port of Amsterdam. Portbase will now contact the sector organisations and the customers to present the plan.

Towards a flexible, smart port
“In the past years, of course a good foundation has been laid for the further expansion of the Portbase service,” Van der Velde continues. “The services within the Port Community System and the community involved form a solid foundation for port-wide information exchange. Moreover, the infrastructure of our new, open platform enables links to be easily made to external parties.” Far more than is currently the case, in the coming period, Portbase wants to facilitate the exchange of dynamic real-time data, linked to planning and notifications. Van der Velde sees it as a clear trend. “Think about yourself as a consumer. Knowing that your package will be delivered tomorrow is no longer enough. You would prefer to know when it will be delivered to the nearest half hour. The future is a flexible, smart port. Current projects in the port, including Nextlogic and Pronto, are already anticipating the fact. To achieve this, you must have a complete picture of the chain and know what is happening now, at this particular moment.”

“The future is a flexible, smart port. Current projects in the port, including Nextlogic and Pronto, are already anticipating the fact”

Challenge parties
Considering the 2015 – 2019 Business Plan, Van der Velde makes some important remarks. “With everything we are going to do, aspects including agreements about data security and what information is available to which people are of crucial importance. The same applies to the neutral position we take. Portbase is a facilitator. We certainly do not want to develop everything ourselves. Other parties can do this just as well, of course linked to the Port Community System. What we will do in the coming years is to challenge the parties involved. Come up with those innovations, participate. Together we are on the way to our final goal.”