€3 million in EU funding will be earmarked to conduct a study and pilot aimed at fostering collaboration and integration between groups of ports and intermodal door-to-door transport solutions which be mainly invested in ports from Italy, Greece, Slovenia and Spain. The activity is part of TEN-T Priority Project 21 “Motorways of the Sea”.

The MoS4MoS ('Monitoring and Operation Services for Motorways of the Sea') project is a pilot action financed by the community financial aid in the field of the trans-European transport and energy networks (TEN-T) primarily aimed at preparing the different key stakeholder systems (ports and terminals, railways, rail freight stations, maritime carriers, short sea consolidation centres, etc) to provide integrated and interoperable services for door-to-door MoS supply chains. Its main objective is to design and demonstrate a set of prototypes that will improve the operational coordination of transport flows and facilitate tight co-ordination between the various administrative services and operators at port level. In 2008, the CoR already asked for MOS aids implementation and TEN-T network delays.

The objective of the project is to design and develop an interoperable ICT platform (the “MIELE Middleware”) able to interface maritime ICT systems (i.e. port community systems and other eMaritime applications) in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Cyprus and Germany (the “National Vertical Pilots”). The project will also take into consideration the requirements of Directive 2010/65/EU, which prescribes that the ICT systems for ship reporting be interoperable throughout Europe and that each EU Member State has a single interface.

The study brings together a number of ports in the Mediterranean area with the aim of designing a set of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions which, when implemented, will improve transport flows and facilitate co-ordination between the various administrations and operators. In addition, this will facilitate freight and passenger transport between the participating ports through smart applications and better integration between the different modes of transport.

At least 3 prototypes will be developed and tested in 2012 to facilitate operations at port gateways, short-sea capacities, intermodal transport solutions and freight corridors. The project is expected to last until the end of 2013.