Port of Antwerp-Bruges
Belgium’s economic powerhouse? That would have to be the port of Antwerp. Over 100,000 people and more than 1,000 companies work for the port either directly or indirectly, accounting for 230 million tons of maritime cargo traffic last year. That means a lot of data. Examples are current vessel traffic information, data on the operation of bridges and locks, video surveillance footage, meteorological data, water levels, staffing of various port services... To visualize this data, Port of Antwerp-Bruges joined forces with Axxes.
Together they developed APICA, the Antwerp Port Information & Control Assistant, a 2/3D version of the port that allows you to view real-time information.
Danny Van Dessel, Manager Digital End Analytics at Port of Antwerp-Bruges, freed up some time for us to give us more insight into the Digital Twin vision and the collaboration. He is responsible for virtually all aspects of the IT services, with the exception of the infrastructure.
“In concrete terms, this includes everything that has to do with Data: data governance, data platform, and data science. There is also a second part, in which we enjoy great collaboration with you, namely the internal development teams. This includes all the applications we create ourselves, the support of our core applications, the service desk, business architects and system operations.”
"For APICA, we were looking for a new collaboration model in the form of teaming. Axxes came up with a very strong proposal and has delivered on it. The faith was there on both sides and you can see where it got us.
Danny Van Dessel - Manager Digital End Analytics - Port of Antwerp-Bruges
Let’s zoom in on one of those development teams: the APICA team. This team consists of four Axxes consultants. What are the tasks assigned to them?
"Within development, we use an agile approach which involves working in different sprints and for which we try to have at least one business architect who determines the requirements and user stories. This person works as closely together as possible with the product owners on the business side. Your APICA team comes into action as a full-stack java development team to build it, deliver it, and to make sure, together with us, that the right architectural choices are made.”
How did the partnership with Axxes come about for the APICA project?
How did the partnership with Axxes come about for the APICA project?
“We had already been working with Axxes for a long time, since before I worked at Port of Antwerp-Bruges, and always according to the need. For APICA, we were looking for a new collaboration model in the form of teaming, and we submitted this request to the market. We were looking for a development team that was not 100% self-managing, but still had a certain degree of self-management. A number of parties responded and outlined what their approach would be. Axxes came up with a very strong proposal and has delivered on it. The faith was there on both sides and you can see where it got us.”
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Can we teach an algorithm to detect the sentiment in a conversation? If there is a higher stress level in a conversation, can we mark it as a priority to be listened to?
APICA Port Managers
What is the aim of APICA?
“With APICA, they are involved in helping us build our Digital Twin. For us, the Digital Twin is a vision, it is not just a project. Our Digital Twin has to create situational awareness for our users. This means that the man or woman sitting at the desk has to have the same level of insight into the situation as the man or woman who is right next to the docks and perceives the actual situation. To achieve this, all the practical information that is available to you outside needs to be pulled into your system, and all administrative information about your processes needs to be pulled to that work floor next to those docks. That’s basically what it comes down to: a combination of bringing a lot of things together.”
What exactly is a Digital Twin and what does it entail for Port of Antwerp-Bruges?
“It consists of two parts: you have all your architecture that forms your Digital Twin. Everything that you can detect as a human being will emerge in a digital way. It is the replacement of your brain and it is your digital nervous system. The cameras are our eyes. The brain, APICA, has to draw conclusions from the images, and that means that you have to apply machine vision – artificial intelligence – to it. For example, ‘I see floating debris and that concentration is too high. It needs to be cleaned up.’ It’s also about what you hear. We recently did tests with VHF communications to find out if we can measure sentiment. Can we teach an algorithm to detect the sentiment in a conversation? If there is a higher stress level in a conversation, can we mark it as a priority to be listened to? For ‘sensing’, we work with sensors embedded in the bridges, among other things. For ‘smelling’, we use eye-noses that do gas detections, and are even better than humans at determining the type of gas, because they can also detect odourless gases. That’s the back end of the Digital Twin.”
“The front end is the platform on which you visualize that data in the clearest way possible, so that people only need one glance to know what is going on. You then need to start thinking carefully about how we are going to display vessels, how we are going to work with colour coding, where we are going to put the menus, how we are going to make sure that all that information doesn’t become an overload on your screen. You can compare it a bit to ‘What if Google maps didn’t think carefully about visualizing their zoom levels.’ With an overload, you won’t find all the information either. It has to remain agile for people.”
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It works well for us to have an external development team that has already mastered that new technology, which enables us to test certain things with it. That way we can also determine internally how we will proceed with it into the future, subsequently onboarding our own people, and also growing a bit.
What makes that you are so pleased with the Axxes team?
“I think it’s the combination of the right profiles, because they are passionate profiles. I feel that they really enjoy working on the project and are not here to merely execute it. Combined with how they work together as part of their passion. The fact that although they are all working from home, they still pull out all the stops to collaborate, within that team, but also with our people. Especially our DevOps architects and business architects enjoy very good contact with them on a daily basis. I think that is their strength: the right profiles with passion for the project. I think we had also explained fairly well beforehand what type of project we had coming up, so they knew what they were about to dive into. And the fact that the teamwork between the guys is very good helps.”
Are you also happy about the Axxes team in terms of technical know-how?
“Yes, that is also an aspect we used the APICA project partly for. We are in the process of making an architecture switch within Port of Antwerp-Bruges, namely from our own framework to the Spring Framework. It works well for us to have an external development team that has already mastered that new technology, which enables us to test certain things with it. That way we can also determine internally how we will proceed with it into the future, subsequently onboarding our own people, and also growing a bit. We are an organization that works quite a lot with external people in our development teams, and that is partly by choice. That market is always evolving and if your own people have to learn new things while creating, it is difficult. By bringing in new teams and having your own people dovetail with them, they learn about the latest market developments in the process. That’s also important for them because they have to manage it after that. Sometimes I would prefer things to be a bit more internal, but working like this is also, partly, a deliberate choice.”
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Other ports sometimes ask me what they need to do in order to get a digital twin. I always ask what they already have available. If their answer is ‘not much’... Well, you can make a nice screen, but what is the point of it?
Drone Port of Antwerp
The launch of a Smart Port makes it clear that you strongly believe in innovation within Port of Antwerp-Bruges. How did this come about?
“Whereas the port used to be the landlord and regulator, in recent years we have come to believe that we need to take on more of a community builder role. ‘To stand still is to fall behind’, that applies to our sector as well. So if you keep doing the same thing, you won’t be able to create more capacity. Growing geographically is difficult, so if we want to grow, it has to be through a different approach: more efficient processes, better visibility... You also want to do that more safely. You want to do that in a changing world that no longer tolerates emissions, among other things, and that means you’re going to have to deploy certain tools. You can’t do that without innovation. You have to start doing things differently to keep up with that changing world, and get things before that world catches up with you. That’s the kind of port we want to be. We want to have the solutions before the problems present themselves.”
How long have you been working on the road to the Smart Port?
“I think we have always been doing that with the applications. You can see that in the growth in transactions that run across our system, in the connections between the different parties, and in the sensors that are already there. It has been a long road already. What we are doing now - and we have been doing that for about 2-3 years - is collecting those aspects and using that combined data to come to a deeper understanding. You cannot do that without acknowledging the past, because if we would claim that we have only been working on it for 3 years, we would be nullifying what people here have been working on for a long time. It is thanks to all the preparation work involved, with them always offering state-of-the-art applications, installing sensors, working on IoT and the like from a very early stage, that we are now able to do this project. Other ports sometimes ask me what they need to do in order to get a digital twin. I always ask what they already have available. If their answer is ‘not much’... Well, you can make a nice screen, but what is the point of it?”
Do you think other industries could also benefit from a digital twin?
“Yes, and it is already starting everywhere. The city of Antwerp is working on a digital twin of the city. Digital twins exist in a lot of areas. What we have built is a digital twin of an area because we have a territory to manage. You can also create digital twins of devices. The next challenge is about how we are going to combine these in the future. There are few sectors that would not benefit from having a digital twin. For example, to assess what is going on and to anticipate the next thing, but also for product development.”
“I don’t know if it has to do with Axxes or the team we have on board, but the passion with which the team is executing the project, they definitely hit a mark with that. They are the only Axxes team that I know. But if they are representative of all other Axxes people, then you are in a strong position in the market."
Port Of Antwerp building
What do you think is important in a partnership?
“As you say it yourself, a partnership. I’m not looking for a supplier, never have been. The IT market and the IT projects we do are so complex that we have to do them together with other parties. Together we are stronger. I don’t want a party that will blindly do what we say, but a party that helps us grow. A partnership through which we all get ahead. That kind of partnership certainly applies to our collaboration with Axxes.”
That’s very nice to hear. Thank you so much for your time, Danny!
Photo credits (boven naar onder):
- Port of Antwerp-Bruges
- Trends Knack
- Port of Antwerp-Bruges
- Port of Antwerp-Bruges
- @portofantwerpbruges - Instagram
- @portofantwerpbruges - Instagram
