The Spanish Association for Standardisation and Puertos del Estado unveiled on Wednesday 27 November the new UNE 178110 standard which lays down the requirements a port has to meet to be considered smart coupled with the recommendations for attaining this goal. This standard has been published by the Spanish standardisation body and sponsored by Puertos del Estado.
It will make it easier for ports to transform and evolve towards the smart port concept by enhancing their management and efficiency. It will also help to craft new value-added services between the port authorities and enterprises in the logistics and port community for their end customers while additionally building on their relationship with their cities.
“Standardisation is a strategic tool to successfully tackle the major challenges facing organisations and in enabling the rollout of public policies," said Alfredo Berges, UNE's chair. "This new UNE standard led by Puertos del Estado is a milestone for Spanish ports by setting out a reference framework which will foster their evolution towards smart ports, thus contributing to the shared progress of the sector."
The standard "supports the goal set out in the Strategic Framework of achieving smart and synchromodal ports to make the state-owned ports system more competitive," commented Álvaro Rodríguez Dapena, Puertos del Estado's chair.
Paloma García, Director of UNE's Standardization Programmes and Stakeholder Engagement, discussed the preparatory stage of a standard's lifecycle, and stressed that the collaboration between the Spanish Association of Standardization and the Ports Authority represents an exemplary model of public-private collaboration promoting a shared society.
Puertos del Estado is partnering with the Spanish National Accreditation Body (ENAC) to draw up a certification scheme which will enable independent third parties to certify compliance with the standard.
Following publication of this standard, Puertos del Estado is also fostering a new document on semantics that will enable interoperability between systems which is crucial to stepping up digitalisation and technological innovation in ports.
The UNE 178110 standard presentation meeting was attended as speakers by: Alfredo Berges, from UNE; Álvaro Rodríguez and Jaime Luezas, from Puertos del Estado; Mafran Martínez, from the Port Authority of Huelva; and Paloma García, from UNE.
