The PPRISM project is coming to its completion at end of 2011. The consortium held its last project meeting early December to discuss the findings of the pilot of 14 indicators. PPRISM partners also exchanged views with the European Commission on the follow-up of the project, which is addressed in the final work package (WP4). The output of WP4 consists of a proposal setting out how a ‘European Port Observatory’ would function in practice, addressing crucial elements such as the Observatory’s mission, scope and main functions. PPRISM will deliver the foundations of a European Port Observatory which effectively will take the form of a European Port Sector Dashboard.

The European Port Observatory will provide insight into the overall performance of the European port system and, notably, the environmental, socio-economic and supply chain performance. In addition, it will provide an updated picture of the port sector in terms of governance models and market structure. To achieve this goal, the Observatory will collect data to populate a series of indicators which will be presented in the form of a public online dashboard.

In 2012, a first dashboard, still in printed form, will be produced and presented at the ESPO Conference in Sopot (Poland) together with the foundations of the future European Port Observatory.

ESPO is most grateful to the PPRISM academic partners for their excellent work during these two intense years and would like to thank the European Commission for the encouraging cooperation and financial support. ESPO is also looking forward to continue the academic-industry partnership in the next years in the context of the development of the European Port Observatory. The academic partners involved in PPRISM are University of Antwerp (ITMMA) for the market trends and structure category, Technical University of Eindhoven (TUe) for the logistic chain and operational category, Cardiff University for the environmental performance category, University of Brussels (VUB) for the socio-economic category and University of the Aegean (UOA) for the governance category.