Digitalization of Seaports - Visions of the Future

The book discusses the potential development of seaports in the context of Digitalization. Major challenges of and business opportunities for seaports arising from the megatrend Digitalization and prerequisites that need to be fulfilled to seize these opportunities are described. Major trends are technological innovations, globalization, demographic change, urbanization, and sustainability as well as port management trends. Digitizing processes in and between seaports leads to a network of seaports that transfers the smartPORT concept to the entire maritime logistics chain, meaning the collaboration and connection of individual Smart Ports. This enables a better handling of complexity. The network is supposed to interlink information and data between participating ports, creating a breeding ground to jointly develop future-oriented and innovative solutions and digital business models within a value creating network. Using scenarios for the future development of seaports the reader gets an impression on how digitized seaports could look like. These scenarios are (1) Maritime transport; (2) Transhipment and hinterland transport; (3) Infrastructure and energy; (4) New business models.