Connected River partners join up with global ports and cities in Lisbon.
During the last week of November, AIVP, a partner of the Connected River project organized its annual International Conference in Lisbon (Portugal). It brought together members of its network, Port and Local authorities, but also private companies and researchers from around the world.
This year’s edition was titled “Open Piers: Steering flows between people, planet and port cities” and brought together more than 400 participants.
The Connected River project was highlighted during three key parts of the program. During a parallel session dedicated to the interface between the port and the city in the context of climate change, Benno Bultink, program manager of Connected River (Rijkswaterstaat) was acting as a moderator and also presented a keynote about the project. When engaging the discussions with the city of Paris (France), the ports of Valparaiso (Chile), Sevilla (Spain), Strasbourg (France), Barcelona (Spain), Tangier (Marrocco), the relevance of the Connected River project was obvious. Indeed, there were many discussions on the increased number of activities happening on the waterfronts and waterways of the world. They all call for increased cooperation with a larger group of stakeholders locally, and with new innovative ways of doing so.
The second highlight was during the parallel session on Blue Economy and Innovation when Marius Eschen and Jasper von Meien (Hamburg Port Authority) presented their “Digital scavenger hunt” experimentation as a pilot area. Surrounded by speakers from the ports of Bordeaux (France), Vigo (Spain), Douala (Cameroon) and Bahia Blanca (Argentina), they could discuss the common challenges of attracting qualified workforce in the port sector and how to foster innovation in the port sectors.
At the end of the session, the participants were invited to try themselves a sample version of the Scavenger Hunt in the surroundings of the Champalimaud Foundation, where the Conference was taking place. They paired up in small teams and had to be the first ones to find the hidden QR code.
Finally, Benno Bultink was a speaker on the main stage during the final day for the “Port City Debate”, in which he was amongst other experts to provide his analysis on the key challenges port cities are facing nowadays, and more specifically on rivers. He then called for a new balance on the water.
AIVP (through its Connected River referent Noémi Mené) is proud to have received and highlighted other members of the Connected River project in their annual conference and hope to engage them also in future events.
The next conference will take place in New York (USA), hosted in cooperation with the New York Economic Development Corporation, which is currently developing many very relevant projects related to regeneration of industrial waterfront throughout the whole American megalopolis. Stay tuned!
Source: AIVP