The duisport pilot will demonstrate the use of big data solutions for the proactive management of bi-modal terminal operations as well as for predictive maintenance of terminal equipment. The port is situated in the middle, Duisburg, a large city with close to ½ million inhabitants. The port lies at the centre of Germany’s largest metropolitan area, the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, with close to 10 million inhabitants. This means that duisport has a multitude of roads, tracks and water ways that serve as entry and exit points for containers to and from the actual terminals and ports. In addition, roads need to be shared with many other cars within the metropolitan area.
With a total handling of 3.7 million TEU (= Twenty-foot equivalent unit, a measure used for capacity in container transportation, based on the volume of a 20-foot-long intermodal container), duisport is the world's largest inland port. The approximately 300 logistics-oriented enterprises located at the Port of Duisburg generate value of about 3 billion euros per year. Eight multi-modal container terminals, over 400 weekly combined transports to over 80 direct destinations in Europe and Asia as well as comprehensive warehousing and storage capacities are tied in locally with market- and customer-oriented services.