The joint and cross-borderPOSIDON pre-commercial public procurement has been a pivotal force in transforming a highly fragmented and innovation-averse sector—environmental remediation of brownfields. Brownfields, sites with limited territorial availability, represent a growing challenge in Europe, where land has become a scarce and valuable resource. The need for sustainable development has intensified the urgency of recovering and reusing these contaminated areas. POSIDON's procurement strategy addresses this by aligning with sustainable growth goals, focusing on in-situ soil decontamination solutions for complex, highly polluted sites. POSIDON PCP is distinguished by its innovative procurement approach, driving the development of breakthrough solutions in areas where no commercially viable options previously existed. Five leading public procurer launched a competitive call for tender to address the decontamination of brownfields polluted by petroleum hydrocarbons and heavy metals. Two cutting-edge technologies—"Soil-Omic with BIOflushing " and "ERASE"—were selected for pilot testing based on their cost-effectiveness and potential to disrupt the market. These technologies represent a leap forward in environmental remediation, particularly for brownfield where traditional technologies have long application times and high costs. The in-situ approaches were tested in Italy and Spain, ensuring their readiness for large-scale application. This PCP initiative has not only fostered the development of these innovative technologies but has also prepared the ground for widespread adoption and market leadership in the European soil decontamination sector. By aggregating demand across borders and ensuring the harmonization of innovation goals, POSIDON exemplifies a transformative shift toward buying innovation process itself, marking a new era in brownfield remediation.

POSIDON gathers 5 European procurers facing similar problems in the sites they manage, affected by analogous pollutants (2 front-runners-Trieste, IT and Bilbao, ES-and 3 observers - Spaque, BE; Vitoria Gasteiz, ES; Baja do Tejo, PT), leveraging public demand to identify fit-for-purpose and cost-effective innovative and sustainable solutions to soil contamination. The common challenge faced by the buyers’ group is identifying a new, life-cycle cost-effective technology for soil and groundwater remediation, capable of decontaminating heterogeneous anthropic soils in brownfields with a mixture of industrial waste (blast furnace slags, construction & demolition waste, filling soils polluted by petroleum hydrocarbons) and soils consisting of clays and sands of marine origin, highly polluted by petroleum hydrocarbons (TPHs and PAHs) and heavy metals (arsenic and lead). Studies on the state of the art, patent analysis, foresight scanning and early market engagement meetings, show that no available technology can meet all identified needs, thus appropriate remediation technologies cannot be acquired through traditional off-the-shelf procurement.With PCP, procurers aim to achieve ambitious improvements in terms of quality and effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of new technology to bring to the market. R&D will be split into three phases: solution design, prototyping, original development and testing of 2 prototypes. Evaluations after each phase progressively identify solutions offering the best value for money. This phased approach allows successful contractors to improve their offers for the next phase based on feedback from procurers. POSIDON intends to create a critical mass through the consolidation of a pan-European network of procurers who, sharing their needs and efforts, can enable the development - through PCP - and subsequent deployment - through a PPI - of novel technologies aimed to cover bigger market challenges in areas of common European interest

Ports are a great example of heterogeneous information hubs. Multiple stakeholders operate inside and outside them with different motivations and businesses. Although document and data interchange is already in place through Port Community Systems (PCS), the interchange is limited to official documentation and services of the Port Authority, such as custom declarations, import/export of cargo, and other formal documents. However, an effective integration of operational data is far from optimal in most ports, and especially so in medium or small ports, where budget is limited and IT services usually is outsourced. In contrast, the available operational data (resources tracking, container status, vessel operations, surface or berth available, air/water quality measurements,...) is constantly increasing and technology is getting inexpensive and widely available. However, the application of such systems is still single-entity centric, since the information is not shared, keeping the real potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 hidden. The same holds for geographic areas surrounding ports, where Smart Cities integrate various data systems and provide valuable services to citizens and authorities. PIXEL will enable a two-way collaboration of ports, multimodal transport agents and cities for optimal use of internal and external resources, sustainable economic growth and environmental impact mitigation, towards the Ports of the Future. PIXEL will leverage technological enablers to voluntary exchange data among ports and stakeholders, thus ensuring a measurable benefit in this process. The main outcome of this technology will be efficient use of resources in ports, sustainable development and green growth of ports and surrounding cities/regions. Built on top of the state-of-the art interoperability technologies, PIXEL will centralise data from the different information silos where internal and external stakeholders store their operational information.

Delays within the maritime supply chain can lead to a “hurry-up-and-wait” syndrome of vessels sailing at a predetermined speed to their destination port to find the terminal or port not ready thus waiting at anchorage in the port area. Updated information about current states are not communicated to all partners in the different port call phases. This makes traffic of vessels waiting, entering, and departing from ports challenging. Communicating terminal or port readiness earlier to vessels allows them to adjust speed and save fuel of up to 23% of the overall voyage including the avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions. The average annual waiting time at anchorage is found to be ca. 9% for wet bulk, ca. 9% for dry bulk, ca. 7% for LPG tankers, ca. 7% for dry breakbulk, ca. 5% for container ships, and ca. 4% for LNG tankers. RoRo-vessels benefit from less traffic-condensed port entries and seaways as well as transparent real-time communication of readiness levels regarding ports and terminals as well as multi-modal hinterland transportation critical for RoRo-port departures. MISSION will develop an interoperable digital real-time-based optimization and decision support tool enabling coordinated port call operations planning and execution in terms of time, fuel consumption, environmental impact, and safety spanning the overall maritime supply chain. Stakeholders benefits from increased transparency and information sharing between shipping companies, terminals, ports, and service providers, enabled to optimize their resource and capacity planning including port’s hinterland modalities in compliance with the Maritime Labor Convention.