The German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology is funding a 3-year project to investigate measures to improve the competitiveness of inland waterway transport and inland ports. The project was initiated in response to the continuing increase of freight transport in Germany and the urgent need for a more sustainable handling of this freight. It is especially the evolution of container handling at European seaports which opens up new opportunities for hinterland transport by inland navigation. Although the current global economic crisis has slowed growth, the trend is expected to continue when economy picks up. However, there are particular challenges and risks regarding the functional needs of inland ports as nodes in the transport chain: on the one hand, the integration of inland ports into intermodal logistic chains has to be secured, to make inland waterway transport more environmentally friendly. On the other, the co-ordination between inland ports and their urban context have to be improved, to deal with specific place-related problems that result from their location within city centers. These challenges serve as starting points for the \u201cBinnen_Land\u201d project.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Struggling inland ports<\/strong><\/p>\n Inland ports connect global flows of goods with local spaces of consumption and production. The functionality of inland ports is therefore a major prerequisite for competitive inland waterway transportation. However, deregulation has caused changes in the logistic market that pressure inland ports to adapt and improve in efficiency. In particular, the increasing competition with rail and road constitute key challenges for inland ports. Furthermore, the lack of land for expansion presents a significant constraint to the further development of inland ports into competitive intermodal hubs. The close neighbourhood of inland ports and urban areas is another major obstacle to development. As many inland ports are still located at their original sites, close to city centres, their activity is more likely to affect the surrounding communities. Also, as port activities increased, the environmental impact of these activities multiplied. At the same time a growing public sensitivity to environmental pollution and the proliferation of environmental regulation can be observed. This diametrically opposed dynamic raises the potential for conflict between inland ports and local residents and may eventually lead to more severe restrictions on port activities. The situation is aggravated as more and more cities plan to introduce housing into port areas. This development, which started with the transformation of unused port sites in the 1970s, is increasingly threatening inland ports which are still working ports (D\u00fcsseldorf and Cologne, for example). Time and again inland ports find themselves defending their stake in land use negotiations. In competition with waterfront development projects, ports frequently feel disadvantaged because local public and urban policy often shows little understanding of the needs of ports and their contribution to the local economic health. Under these circumstances, securing port sites and improving their functionality become very difficult tasks.<\/p>\n Selected preliminary results of the project<\/strong><\/p>\n The central aim of the research project Binnen_Land is to strengthen inland ports as elements of intelligent transport chains, nodes for freight transport and to secure the functionality of economic and logistics services for cities. So far, an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) has been conducted to evaluate the specific situation of the participating German inland ports. As a first result it can be stated that there is no \u201cgeneral\u201d threat to inland ports by local conflicts or urban policy. Various conflicts can be observed at each port location, but they differ in topic and intensity. Each port situation is different due to the specific local context. Nevertheless, one topic has emerged that influences the level of conflict at all port locations: communication.<\/p>\n Communication the key<\/strong><\/p>\n Communication is the key in dealing with a whole variety of problems (Fig. 1). One important task of the \u201cBinnen_Land\u201d- project is to give an overview of communication strategies that have been developed elsewhere or to develop new ones. These strategies are supposed to improve the communication between ports. Inland ports often still act as isolated entities. In order to be able to compete with other modes of transport, co-operation of ports is essential. There is no co-operation without communication. The aim is to design a communication strategy which will be called \u201cA New Hanse\u201d that opens a new chapter of port cooperation and representation. Regarding the institutional representation and communication of inland ports through professional associations, a network analysis has been conducted to analyze the structures of representation. The analysis shows a highly fragmented representation of port interests with many different lobby groups, a lot of interlinking, but without a clear co-ordination. On the basis of these results, advice will be given on how to improve the efficiency of inland port representation through lobby groups. Getting politicians to communicate the interests of ports is not always easy, especially if urban development pressure is high. The SWOT has revealed a selective stakeholder management and a lack of communication skills of inland ports regarding the interaction with non-port actors. Communication with the general public is often ignored completely. As noted in the previous issue of GreenPort Journal (2010, Vol. 7), public communication has not been an area of activity of most ports. Within the project, activities of participating ports and selective best practice examples will be evaluated regarding their public relations efforts. As a result, a toolkit will be developed, which will offer a wide selection of effective activities, internet communication and strategies to reach the public. Furthermore, communication has proven to be essential in local conflicts. In contradiction to the expected outcome, the vicinity of inland ports and housing does not always lead to conflict. Especially in historically grown settings, there is a high tolerance and even identification of local residents with their ports. Nevertheless, the environmental impact of inland ports frequently leads to conflicts. One aim of the project is to develop a manual that shows how conflicts can be minimized, mitigated and de-escalation through communication strategies. Finally, inland ports are largely underrepresented in the minds of the local shipping and logistics industry. One reason is the fragmentary consideration of transport chains and the existing insufficiencies at the interfaces between inland waterways and other transport modes. As a consequence, inland navigation could not benefit satisfactorily from increasing freight flows. The cause of the problem seems to be an insufficient client communication by the inland water transport sector. The \u201cBinnen_Land\u201d-project will respond to the problem by establishing an information platform called \u201cHafenindex\u201d. This platform will present an easy access to inland port operators and it will provide potential clients with comprehensible information about water-dispatching and the diverse range of logistic services inland ports have to offer. All publications on these issues will be available online by the end of 2010. The communication strategies will form a key part of these results. They are accompanied by the logistical and technical findings of other project parts. Together, these findings are supposed to show various ways in which inland ports can deal with the multitude of challenges due to increasing competition.<\/p>\n For further information about this research project, please visit www.binnen-land.de or contact: Dipl.-Geogr. Femke Grabbert, Technische Universit\u00e4t Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH) Institut f\u00fcr Verkehrsplanung und Logistik. Tel: +49 40 428 78 – 41 91; femke. grabbert@tu-harburg.de<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The \u201cBinnen_Land\u201d Research project has been established in response to the urgent need to handle increasing volumes of freight more sustainable. Femke Grabbert and Verena Meister of the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg provide an update on the project<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4637,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-4636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-greenport"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4636"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=4636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}