The Port of Barcelona participated last week in the 50th session of the Facilitation Committee (FAL50) of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), where it played a relevant role in the presentation of the new Port Call Optimisation Guide, a reference international guide aimed at improving the efficiency and coordination of vessel calls at ports.
The presentation was delivered by Ingrid Boqué, Director of Institutional Relations of the Port of Barcelona, in her capacity as President of the Technical Committee for Data Collaboration of the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH). The session was shared with Patrick Verhoeven, General Director of the IAPH, and Ben van Scherpenzeel, representative of the International Harbour Masters’ Association (IHMA) and the Port of Rotterdam.
The new guide gathers best practices and guidelines to move towards more efficient, predictive, and collaborative management of port operations. It is a joint initiative between the IAPH and the IHMA that aims to standardize the basic data of port calls, with the objective of enabling their optimization and putting an end to decades of fragmentation and misalignment in the exchange of information among the various actors in the maritime-port chain.
"The presentation of the Port Call Optimisation Guide at the IMO is an important step towards achieving more efficient port calls," Boqué noted, indicating that the initiative has the backing of 40 maritime organizations, including major NGOs from the shipping sector represented at the IMO. "From the Port of Barcelona, we promote international cooperation and the establishment of shared guidelines as key tools to improve the performance of the global maritime system while ensuring safety and trust in an increasingly digital environment," the executive added.
As part of the same meeting, Boqué also spoke at the plenary session of the FAL Committee to present the cybersecurity guidelines for emerging technologies published by the IAPH working group that she has chaired since last year. In her speech, she emphasized the importance of ensuring security in a context of growing digitalization in the maritime and port sector, an area where the adoption of new technologies comes with risks that require regulatory frameworks and shared protocols on an international scale.
The optimization of port calls has become one of the priorities of the global maritime sector, as coordination among the various stakeholders involved —port authorities, maritime captains, terminal operators, shipping companies, pilots, and auxiliary services— is crucial to reducing vessel wait times, decreasing fuel consumption and associated emissions, and improving the productivity of port infrastructures. The standardization of data related to port calls is a prerequisite for digital platforms to provide reliable, real-time information to all participants in the logistics chain.