Port Information System News

Supply chain issues tied to liner shipping have been front page news throughout 2021; just about everyone agrees that there’s a problem. The underlying cause is right out of Economics 101: a surge in demand for moving containerized cargo, in the face of “inelastic” throughput capacity (which includes vessels and their landside interfaces to surface transportation, trucks and rail) that could not handle the swell, attributable to re-stocking of containerized cargo as economic activity recovered from the pandemic induced jolts.

Christine Cabau Woehrel has taken up her new role as CEO of the Marseilles Fos port authority after two years heading the Port of Dunkirk. She succeeds Jean-Claude Terrier following a French transport ministry nomination that was backed by the port’s supervisory board in February and has now been confirmed by government decree. Her move marks a return to the headquarters city of CMA GGM, France’s biggest and the world’s third largest container carrier, where she worked from 1987-2011.

The Maritime Exchange for the Delaware River and Bay and its sister organization, the New Orleans Board of Trade, signed an agreement in June to partner on the implementation of the Exchange’s Maritime On-Line (MOL) Ship Reporting program at Mississippi River ports. The Exchange, which upgraded its Maritime On-Line system last year, entered into a similar partnership with the Jacksonville (FL) Maritime Transportation Exchange in 2002. Ship Reporting, the Exchange’s vessel tracking module of Maritime On-Line, is used by trading partners to monitor anticipated and historical ship movements on the Delaware River. The Exchange collects vessel traffic data through a variety of means, which in turn is made available via the Internet and through published reports to the maritime community.

CIBER, Inc. is delivering a Harbor Management and Security (HMS) packaged application solution for the US Coast Guard and the State of Hawaii to simultaneously improve port safety and security, maritime commerce efficiencies, and maritime domain awareness through a centralized, "one-stop shopping" Internet-based system. In a public/private partnership approach, CIBER's HMS system provides the engine for sharing port safety, security and commerce data. "With more than 95 percent of the United States non-NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement) foreign trade carried by ship and the increase in terrorist threats, it makes providing a port information system like HMS even more important and time critical," said Bill Parker, Maritime Systems practice director, CIBER.