Port of the future
The port is responsible for the safety of 120 square kilometers. They want to be able to see, hear, feel and smell what's happening inside the entire port. This is made possible by using drones, sensors and 5G, combined in a digital twin.
Drones
In 2018, the dream was to fly drones through the port further than the operator can see. At this time, this was not allowed by law lol. After doing a pretty safe proof of concept, use of drones was allowed by law. The footage is used to inspect assets, like bridges and towers, as well as finding oil spills in the water.
Introducing "drone as a service". The port wants to do 18 drone flights per day, but the technology gets old pretty quick.
ADLC delivers cargo drones. No more traffic jams, just move it through the sky. The drones can carry 15KG of cargo, for example chemical samples. The 15KG is not a technical limit, it's limited by law. The vision of the port is to make drone traffic financially sustainable, because depending on money from Europe and Belgium is not sustainable.
Autonomous vehicles
In 2018, the initiave was launched to control ships from a distance (more specific binnenvaartsschepen, whatever that is in English). The dream was to commercialize this in 2021. In 2019, the port and Vlaamse Waterweg pushed hard on this initiative. Seafar controls and monitors cargo ships from a distance. This kind of innovation is a must to keep cargo ships afloat (haha), because work-life balance is pretty bad, so there are less people entering the sector.
Internet of things
The port owns a bunch of assets, bridges, fenders, embarkments, and more. For example, sensors measure the force on "meerpalen" (the thing a boat throws some rope around to not float away), as well as measuring the wear and tear on bridges.
Smart cameras are used to determine what's moving in the port, trucks, trains, ships. Pre-trained, open source models are fine to use, but they are not trained on port assets, like fenders and ladders.
Digital twin
Air sensors measure chemical gasses in the port. Apart from a big port, Antwerp is also a pretty big chemical sector. Quality of the air is combined with air pressure, wind speeds and direction of the wind. There's no such thing as "the digital twin", there's only a bunch of layers of data. Depending on the user, different layers are used.
Port of Antwerp Bruges has been using AI long before ChatGPT was born. One of the models is used for prediction on when ships will dock. Based on historical data, a prediction can be made on how many "sleepboten" to prepare. When the historical information is combined with the current wind information, a precise prediction can be made. Also, ships cannot throw their anchor and wait, they must be ablo to sail smoothly.
Communication
What if we capture communication between ships and ship to wall? Can we transform this audio to text? Can we extract emotion from the communication? Talking over VHF, the operators are certified. All radio channels are open, but the port does not constantly follow these channels. November 2022, with the introduction of ChatGPT, the accuracy of extracted data went up to 95%. The combination of this technology, sensor data and camera footage, it has been made possible to detect remarkable situations.
Sattelites
Field officers drive and sail through the port to detect if assets or materials are out of the ordinary. In the future, their job will be improved by comparing sattelite data over time to detect dangerous or unplanned situations.
Cyber security
In the port, cyber resilience in an important concept. When the port is being attacked, it is either organized crime or state sponsored. Before the invasion of Ukraine, port terminals were hacked to make statement. When the port is hacked, do we still have an operational port? "When the computer systems are down, can we still open a briges?". When discussing cyber attacks, this also includes the electrician that knows where the button is to open the bridge.
As an organisation, cyber attacks are high on the risk report. The probability is close to certain and the impact is enourmous. After the city of Antwerp was hacked a few years ago, the fact that the risk is high, was confirmed.
Culture
"Yes, but" must become "What if" to drive innovation. Having enough "Yes but" people in the same room, is disastrous for innovation. Inside innovation, this happens when you have a problem and you want to solve it. On the other hand, outside innovation, propses innovation. Vito made a camera, attached it to a drone and used it to find diseases on corn. This technology could be used to detect oil leaks in the port. So an innovation for farmning could also be used in ports.
Conclusion
APICA might be one of the most innovative things I've seen.