Port of Rotterdam: 44 sensors that decide when a ship berths

The challenge: berthing with the real tide, wind and visibility

A deep-draught vessel can only enter or leave when the water gives it enough under-keel clearance and when wind and current allow it to manoeuvre safely. If those conditions are estimated imprecisely, the port covers itself with wide margins: the ship waits longer than necessary or loads less than it could.

In 2018 the Port Authority announced a digitalisation programme with IBM to connect the port with sensors and predictive models. According to the announcement itself, gaining up to one hour in berthing time can mean savings of around 80,000 dollars for shipping lines and the port.

The solution: a generic IoT platform and a first critical application

In January 2019 the port put into operation an IoT platform developed with IBM, Cisco, Esri and Axians. The first application in production was the hydro-meteorological one: 44 sensors spread across the port, combined with forecasting models, Rijkswaterstaat data and astronomical tide calculations.

The system measures tide height, tidal current, salinity, wind speed and direction and visibility. From the outset it processed some 1.2 million data points a day for models, systems and users.

What matters about the architecture is that the platform is generic: the water and wind application was the first, but the same sensor, network and data infrastructure serves the next ones, from quay condition to traffic management.

The calculation: what 1.2 million data points a day mean

1,200,000 points a day across 44 sensors is about 27,300 points per sensor per day, i.e. on the order of one reading every 3 seconds per sensor (86,400 s ÷ 27,300 ≈ 3.2 s). That resolution is enough to follow a gust of wind or the turn of a current, which is exactly what decides whether a manoeuvre is authorised or postponed.

At that rate, the value lies not in storing data but in turning it into a timely decision: if the model confirms the safe window sooner, the ship berths sooner, and that is where the hour gained in the 2018 announcement appears.