Since its beginning in September 2022, PLOTO partners have closely collaborated to further support the environmental sustainability of inland waterways against climate change and environmental extremes. With operations in Belgium, Hungary, and Romania, the three pilot sites will be the testbeds for the implementation of the innovations and each of them has different specificities.
The Belgian site, in the Walloon region, involves the Service Public of Walloon and the University of Liège, combining their respective expertise in the analysis and processing of data from different modelling and impact analysis sources. The study and demonstration activities will consider the area of the Meuse river since it is a major waterway on which multiple economic sectors of Belgium depend.
The experience in Hungary is different because it involves the Budapest national public port and four project partners (Freeport of Budapest Logistics Ltd, Hungarian State Railway Company, National Association of Radio Distress-Signalling and Infocommunications, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Department of Transportation Technology and Economics) will need to work together in the only significant tri-modal container terminal of the country with a capacity of 175,000 TEU/year.
Finally, the Romanian pilot includes a very dynamic river sector, highly influenced by the hydrological conditions and impacted by water level periods. Demonstrations of the selected river sections will generate an important flow of data, thus supporting the work of the Lower Danube River Administration, the Danubius University of Galati, and the Romanian River Transport Cluster.
Stay tuned because the mentioned partners will be participating in an interview series starting in the upcoming weeks that will allow you to discover what is happening in each pilot site of the PLOTO project.
