Emerging ICT in port operations: Case studies

Geographical location, infrastructures, and services are traditionally the pillars of a port. In the last years, emerging Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) were identified as a new pillar. Today new benefits and challenges are connected with the introduction of shared emerging ICTs 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. The paper describes Transportation System Models to explain how ports could benefit, in terms of costs reduction, of the potentialities offered by emerging ICTs in solving interactions among decision-makers. Moreover, the paper presents a critical analysis of some representative case studies of the presence of Port Community Systems and emerging ICTs inside ports, in order to aggregate the observed trends in some macro-classes.