Located in the heart of the Port of Hamburg, homePORT provides space for collaboration and innovation to bring together companies, start-ups, universities and researchers. This is how they want to shape the maritime economy and port of the future together today.
The Port of Hamburg faces various challenges ranging from competitiveness and environmental concerns to growing demands for innovative port management practices. To meet these challenges and to promote product innovation in Hamburg, a free space to try out innovative and hardware-heavy products under real conditions is needed. For this, transformative co-design with participation of citizens, ambitious port actors, science, and startups is key. homePORT comes to meet these requirements by designating and providing for test areas, a maker space, and an overarching community in the heart of the port to serve as a maritime real laboratory.
HomePORT won the 2021 IAPH sustainability award in the ‘outreach and port city dialogue’ category. With this incubator space, the port of the future can be discussed, designed, and developed together with port stakeholders, startups, and research institutions. This way, answers to questions about the end of the container age can be found; alternative utilization concepts considered; acceptance issues with regard to autonomous systems on land, water, and air evaluated; and approaches for a circular economy in the sense of a zero-emission approach simulated to develop sustainable concepts including ecological goals.
The platform, including the community with networking opportunities for the exchange of knowledge and workshops as well as areas for testing under real conditions, has been up and running in the port since mid-December 2020. In addition, the plans for establishing a container innovation campus have been completed and will be implemented in the coming months. In cooperation with the Helmut Schmidt University, mechanical engineering expertise will be provided to ensure that the maker space will be operational later in 2021.
The Port of Hamburg is further working on establishing strategic partnerships on local, national, and international level that are necessary to develop the concept further, share knowledge, and learn from one other.
Source and photo credit IAPH
