Use of ICT for More Efficient Port Operations: The Experience of the EASYLOG Project

The 4.0 revolution in the shipping industry is growing fast and ports are requested to constantly innovate and evolve. Ports need to become not only smarter to implement more efficient, sustainable, and safer operations but also interconnected with each other. This paper presents the experience of the Easylog Project – Optimized logistics for ports and intermodal transport – funded under the Interreg IT-FR Maritime 2014–2020 program. Easylog aims to improve the mobility of rolling cargo between Italian and French regions by taking advantage of ICT technologies to increase the performance of intermodal transport chains and the overall quality of the services offered by ports. The project involves five ports in the upper Tyrrhenian area for which it proposes the shared adoption of integrated ICT devices for optimized and secure management of port operations between the operators involved in the cross-border (trans)port chain. The driving idea is to move from a non-integrated and fragmented management and control system of port events and flows to a common and connected ICT system. Easylog may represent a useful case study potentially replicable in many port contexts.