London-headquartered Arup University has selected Valenciaport, as the European port most committed to transparency, to carry out a study on the impact of COVID-19 on maritime transport.
As ARUP points out in its report “Valenciaport has been selected to carry out this analysis because it is the busiest port in Spain and Southern Europe. It also operates with all types of traffic, so it was possible to study how this crisis affected each of the traffics.”
In the research project, ARUP has based its analysis on digital technology and information available to the public. “In this sense, Valencia is a port with a strong commitment to the transparency of data and makes a great effort to make it available. Having information on the traffic of 2020 has been crucial in the selection of ports,” Arup said in its report.
“The important thing about this report is that an association as large as ARUP with 16,000 engineers and architects has chosen us as the first port in Europe for its transparency. This recognition is not only because we provide all the information but also because we make it accessible through data, graphics… And this is the reason why we have been chosen,” explained Aurelio Martínez, President of the Valencia Port Authority.
In addition to Valenciaport, Arup looked at other European ports (Hamburg, Bremen, Le Havre, Marseille, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Antwerp) in order to include them in the analysis and compare them with Valencian ports.
However, the University points out the lack of concrete information of these ports to be able to carry out the study.
“Antwerp has been chosen as the second port for the study because it was the only one, although with a limited scope, among the largest in Europe that is not Spanish, which has information that could be used for comparison,” says ARUP in the report.
The University therefore had to conduct a comparative study between Valenciaport and Antwerp to analyse the impact of the COVID-19 on maritime transport in the first quarter of the year.
“The Port of Valencia has published information on monthly traffic for April 2020. These data have been analysed in the dashboard that only contains information from Valencia,” the study says.
ARUP is an independent firm that provides professional services in engineering, design, planning, project management and consulting services, bringing together more than 16,000 professionals worldwide.
