Portuguese Pilot - Monitoring capabilities for environmental quality and safety levels in ports
- Sustainability Aspects: Monitoring environmental quality and safety levels in port areas;
- Targeted Vertical: Environmental monitoring, port safety, and infrastructure energy-awareness;
- Partners:
- Instituto Pedro Nunes: Use Case leader, Developer and Integrator;
- Instituto de Telecomunicacoes: Developer and Integrator, and Testbed providers;
- Altice Labs SA: Testbed providers, Telecom operator;
- One Source: Developer and Integrator;
- JSIO: Developer and Integrator;
- Administração do Porto de Aveiro, S.A: End user
The Portuguese pilot of 6G-VERSUS is being deployed in the Port of Aveiro and its surrounding operational area to demonstrate how B5G/6G technologies, AI, and advanced network programmability can improve environmental monitoring, port safety, and infrastructure energy efficiency. The pilot combines IoT sensing, real-time data processing, AI-assisted decision support, and dynamic network control to create a more sustainable, efficient, and responsive port environment. Its activities are organized into three complementary scenarios: environmental awareness, port safety awareness, and infrastructure energy-awareness, while directly contributing to relevant Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and addressing upcoming environmental regulations.
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The pilot is structured into three complementary scenarios:
Real-time monitoring of water and air quality in and around the Port of Aveiro, supported by energy-efficient IoT sensing, 5G NR RedCap connectivity, and AI-driven data analysis for environmental awareness and early detection of anomalies.
AI-assisted monitoring of port operations and vehicle flows, including hazardous materials detection, adaptive video quality, and dynamic allocation of network and compute resources to improve safety, responsiveness, and operational efficiency.
AI-driven optimization of port and urban-support infrastructure, including public lighting and Electric Vehicle (EV) charging, using location-aware control and energy production/consumption forecasting to improve efficiency and sustainability. |
EuCNC 2026 & 6G Summit Poster
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Motivation and challenges:
Regulations such as the Fit for 55 packages, focusing on directives like National Emission Reduction Commitments (NEC) and the Ambient Air Quality Directive (AAQD), water quality regulations, including Zero Pollution package proposals and revised Urban Wastewater Treatment (UWT) Directive, will all have significant impact in future ports operation. Moreover, the logistics operations in ports have significant environmental impacts, especially during the last-mile transportation of goods. To address these challenges, the project proposes a system to enhance safety, efficiency, and transparency in port operations. This system involves installing cameras at entry gates for truck identification and integrating 6G technologies to monitor hazardous material transportation. A proof of concept (PoC) will use strategically positioned cameras and video analytics to detect trucks carrying dangerous goods, providing real-time alerts for safety management. Additionally, the system will capture images of authorized truck movements to verify cargo condition and aid in insurance claims and liability determination.
Solutions/Trial scenarios to address the challenges
The system will utilize B5G connectivity to support its functionalities, ensuring high-speed, low- latency transmission of data from cameras to central processing units. RedCap-enabled features support efficient resource allocation, optimizing energy and network usage by initially using low-quality streams and low-performance clusters for basic truck detection. As trucks are detected, the system dynamically upgrades to higher quality streams and allocates additional resources as needed. Context-aware and dynamic activation of network slices ensures uninterrupted transmission of critical data, such as FHD/4K video and increased frequency IoT data collection, enhancing reliability and performance while minimizing inefficiencies associated with continuous streaming of top-quality video. Overall, the use case contributes to environmental sustainability, operational efficiency, and public safety by combining real-time sensing, adaptive connectivity, and data-driven decision-making in port operations.
Figure 1: Portuguese sustainable and safe Port use case diagram.
The use case combines B5G/6G technology with other advancements to meet specific needs:
a) IoT sensors for monitoring air and water quality, noise levels, and energy consumption with small data transmission;
b) B5G/6G-enabled energy and data-efficient video surveillance, supporting enriched sensing and monitoring of incidents such as the illegal entry of vehicles carrying dangerous goods
c) Knowledge Defined Networking, Green AI, and Orchestration for efficient management of multiple B5G/6G network slices tailored to support a port’s digital twin including real-time infrastructure monitoring and incident analysis.
The activities required for the successful implementation of the envisioned use case can be split according to the triplet of app components as presented in Table 1.
Table 1: 6G-VERSUS application components for Portuguese use case
| V-apps | (1) process data collected from water quality, air quality, power consumption systems, and heterogeneous video cameras to verify the presence of vehicles and hazardous materials, collectively enabling a reliable digital twin of the operational environment and supporting incident prevention and detection; (2) provide presentation, reporting, and dashboard capabilities to campus managers, offering a real-time view of resources and alerting them to potential risks. |
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| AI-apps | (1) the AI app, will provide automatic recommendations according to energy-efficiency objectives, including; (1) dynamic updates to IoT devices QoS and energy profiles; (2) predictive and prescriptive analytics to support the development of a smart, sustainable campus digital twin. |
| N-Apps | (1) ensure reliable sensor-network communication while coordinating relevant actions, for example through RedCap capabilities that control transmission efficiency based on network parameters, such as temporarily degrading QoS; (2) activate high-quality video transmission from cameras when trucks are detected and reduce video settings when trucks are absent; (3) collect data from multiple sources and ingest it into the Live!Data management platform to strengthen the environmental monitoring capabilities of the smart campus environment. |
As sustainability is a core priority in 6G-VERSUS, the main sustainability challenges are summarized together with the expected outcomes of this use case in Table 2.
Table 2: Main sustainability challenges and expected outcomes for portuguese use case.
| Main Sustainability Challenges |
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| 1) Environmental: a) Real-time monitoring of environmental parameters helping to identify and mitigate pollution sources; b) Optimization of B5G/6G network energy efficiency; c) Electric power/energy management for various subsystems on the roads and buildings within the infrastructure; d) Renewable energy, automatic street lighting system with efficient power management; e) Tracking of EV/non-EV fleet, charging efficiency and usage monitoring. |
| 2) Economic: a) Cost savings and increased flow of goods, driven from optimized logistics and port operations; b) Avoid or minimize major damage to existing services via digital map of underground campus infrastructures (electrical/internet wiring, water pipes) for predictive maintenance and quick tracking of critical issues; c) Reduce monthly bills, via the monitoring of each point in the power grid and analysis of real-time load on the power system to detect potential failures. |
| 3) Societal: a) Reduction in the number of accidents and incidents within port facilities and surrounding road infrastructures; b) decrease in response time to emergency situations through the implementation of advanced communication, sensor networks and incident detection systems; c) enhancement of overall public perception of safety and security in port regions, as measured by community surveys or sentiment analysis. |
| Expected Outcomes |
| 1) Heterogeneous IoT and 6G devices connected to a service data platform, enabling for port infrastructure up to last mile following capabilities: a) Real-time alerting, providing awareness to critical events or anomalous data; b) Uncovering patterns and relationships among the collected heterogeneous data; c) Predictive analytics, forecasting events or trends based on aggregated historical data; d) Prescriptive analytics, recommending specific actions for optimizing outcomes. Key performance indicators may include improved air and water quality monitoring coverage, lower energy consumption, and increased accuracy in objects and hazardous materials vehicle detection. |