With excellent results and very important prospects for future Research Programs in the shipping and transport sectors, concluded the three-day Meeting (18-20 June 2018) hosted by the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) under the title "STM - Port Collaborative Decision Making (PortCDM)" and within the framework of the EU funded Program “Sea Traffic Management (STM) Validation”.

The objective of the STM project, which was launched in September 2015 and will be completed in December 2018 with a budget of € 43 million, is to validate the concept of Sea Traffic Management through the introduction of digital innovation and new technological developments.

More than 50 partners from 13 European countries are participating in the Program, with CUT participating as the only official partner on behalf of Cyprus, in full cooperation with the Ministry of Transport, the Deputy Ministry of Shipping, the Cyprus Port Authority, the Limassol Port with the private companies DP World, Eurogate and P&O Maritime which operate in the port, the Department of Merchant Shipping, the Cyprus Shipping Chamber, the Cyprus Shipping Association and the private company Tototheo Maritime.

In the three-day Meeting, which also included a tour of the Limassol port, participated twenty-five STM researchers from Sweden, Spain, Norway and Cyprus, as well as a number of representatives from other local public and private bodies.

“Participation in the STM Program and any future similar research projects is a great honor for CUT and Cyprus, as well as a huge responsibility for the Republic of Cyprus to respond to the relevant technological and research challenges in the context of the 4th Industrial Revolution”, was highlighted among other things during the official opening ceremony of the Meeting by both the Deputy Minister of Shipping, Mrs. Natasa Pilidis, and the Rector of the Cyprus University of Technology, Professor Andreas Anagiotos.

The opening ceremony also featured two invited talks. The first one entitled "Port CDM: From Concept to Reality" was presented by Mikael Lind, Associate Professor and Research Manager sustainable transports, RISE - Research Institute of Sweden and “STM Validation” Project, “Activity 1 (Port CDM) testbeds” Activity Leader. This was followed by “Port CDM Validation at the Port of Limassol: Past, present and future” presented by Sotos Voskarides, Cyprus - coordinator of “STM Validation“ Project, Assistant Professor, CUT Department of Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering and Informatics.

At the end of his presentation, Dr Voskarides announced that the Research Program “STEAM (Sea Traffic management in the EAstern Mediterranean)” had recently been approved for funding by the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation and is expected to start by January 2019. The STEAM Program, which is a 3-year project coordinated by CUT with a budget of approximately 1 million EUR, aims to strengthen the efforts of the Cyprus Government towards empowering the Limassol port in becoming a world-class transshipment and information hub and a driver for short sea shipping in the Eastern Mediterranean. This will be achieved through the adoption of modern digital technologies brought to the maritime sector and enhanced services based on standardized ship and port connectivity, based on the foundations laid out by the STM - Port Collaborative Decision Making (PortCDM) philosophy.