Summary
Purpose of the Contest
The Innovation Awards “Algeciras BrainPort” to the best Master’s Thesis (TFM), sponsored by the Port Authority of the Bay of Algeciras (hereinafter, APBA) and the Technological Campus Foundation of Algeciras (hereinafter, FCTA), aim to recognize the talent and contribution to the port of innovative initiatives, carried out by university students and researchers, and which deal with the different aspects related to the business activity of the Port of Algeciras Bay.
Innovation forms part of the DNA of the APBA, where it is actively working to systematise innovation and create an innovative culture with the aim of consolidating an innovation ecosystem of international reference around the Port of Algeciras Bay. Therefore, the APBA and the FCTA want to give recognition to those innovative changes of process, product, service or even the development of new business models that can improve the competitive advantage of our port.
Project’s alignment
El tema de las propuestas para esta tercera edición debía estar relacionado con la actividad logístico-portuaria y marítima que tiene lugar en el Puerto Bahía de Algeciras y estar alineado con alguno de los focos de innovación definidos por la APBA en su renovada estrategia:
- 1. Competitiveness and logistic orquestration
- 2. Sustainability and climate neutrality
As a source of complementary information for the development of the work, the participants were able to use, among others, the open data sets that the APBA makes available to the general public through its innovation portal (https://innovacion.apba.es/abp-lab-centre/portal-de-datos/).
Project’s assessment
The works were evaluated by a Jury constituted annually for this purpose and made up of seven (7) members belonging to the University of Cadiz (UCA), FCTA and APBA.
Specifically, the following criteria were analysed:
- Strategic fit and importance of the theme and solution developed in the work in relation to the innovation strategy and the current challenges of the Port of Algeciras Bay (20%).
- Impact of the innovative solution on the competitive advantage or image/reputation of the Port of Algeciras Bay, at a socio-economic level (25%).
- Degree of maturity and novelty of the innovative solution or proposal (20%).
- Technical/technological feasibility of the solution in terms of its development, implementation and technical compatibility or compatibility with the business model in the Port of Algeciras Bay (25%).
- Clarity, precision, structure and capacity for synthesis of the documents submitted (10%).
The award-winners
The Jury decreed as the winner of this third edition, Ms. Sara Robledo Blasco, from the ETS Industrial Engineering ETS. Sara Robledo Blasco, from the ETS of Industrial Engineering of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), for her Master’s thesis “Analysis of the situation and design of a tool for the planning of machinery in goods transport operations in a terminal of the Port of Valencia”, focused on providing port terminals with a tool for forecasting equipment and personnel resources, with the aim of solving current business challenges such as high congestion, high unit costs and the great variability existing in terms of machinery productivity. The tool, developed as a web service, consists of predictive models developed with machine learning techniques, capable of generating personnel and machinery estimates with confidence intervals, based on the analysis of historical data on the movement of containers in the terminal and the resources assigned to the operations.
The latter received from Ms. Rosa Rodríguez, Director-Manager of the FCTA and Mr. Eduardo Villalba, Secretary of the Board of Directors of the APBA, an economic endowment of 1,200€ and the possibility of carrying out a paid internship for 6 months at the APBA, respectively.
A diploma was also awarded to the other finalist, Consuelo Albarrán Gómez, from the Master’s Degree in Systems and Computer Engineering Research at the University of Cadiz (UCA), for her work “Analysis of technologies and business model proposal for digital transformation in port industrial training“.
