About the Green Innovation Compass

The Green Innovation Compass is an open knowledge platform that helps ports navigate the transition towards a smart, green and resilient future.

The platform brings together knowledge of innovative technologies, operational concepts and digital solutions that can support the transformation of ports and port-related logistics. Rather than prescribing a single pathway, the Green Innovation Compass provides evidence-based insights, enabling ports to explore, compare and assess innovative technologies relevant to their own ambitions, context and development priorities.

The knowledge collected in the platform is based on research findings, pilots, and practical experience from ports, industry partners and research organisations across Europe.

The Green Innovation Compass helps you explore innovation topics for ports that may be relevant to your strategic development and sustainability ambitions. The platform brings together knowledge on a wide range of innovative technologies and for each technology provides a structured overview of potential solution pathways, implementation requirements, expected impacts and key barriers and enablers.

Rather than prescribing a single strategy, the Green Innovation Compass supports informed decision-making. You can compare different port innovation options, understand the conditions needed for successful implementation, and assess how topics such as electrification, alternative fuels, automation and digitalisation may fit your own port context.

By combining insights from research, demonstrations and real-world applications, the platform enables you to evaluate opportunities and challenges in a consistent and practical way, helping you shape your own roadmap towards a green and smart future.

Each innovation in the Green Innovation Compass is linked to a Technology Readiness Level (TRL), an internationally recognised framework used to indicate the technological maturity of an innovation. Lower TRL levels represent technologies still undergoing development or testing, while higher levels indicate solutions that have been demonstrated and proven in operational environments.

The purpose of including TRL information is to help you understand how far an innovation has progressed from a technological perspective and what type of involvement may be appropriate for your organisation.

You can play various roles depending on the maturity of a technology. You may prefer to adopt innovations only once they have reached a high level of maturity and have been proven in practice. Or you can choose to become involved earlier, for example during pilot or demonstration phases, allowing you to help shape the development of the innovation, better adapt it to your local context and strategic objectives or prepare your organization for the large scale development.

By providing TRL information, the Green Innovation Compass helps you assess where an innovation currently stands and supports you to dentify the level of engagement that best aligns with your ambitions, risk appetite and innovation strategy.

In addition to technology readiness, the platform considers digital maturity.

The Port Digital Maturity Level indicates the degree of digital capability and organisational readiness required for successful implementation of a particular innovation. Certain solutions can be adopted within relatively basic digital environments, while others depend on advanced data infrastructure, system integration and digital processes.

This helps you better understand whether an innovation matches your current capabilities and what development steps may be needed before implementation. You can find the digital maturity level of your port via: Digital Maturity Assessment Tool - Green Inland Ports. This tool is intended for both inland and seaports.

The Green Innovation Compass is one of the legacy outcomes of the MAGPIE project (sMArt Green Ports as Integrated Efficient multimodal hubs), a Horizon 2020 initiative that brought together ports, companies, knowledge institutes and public authorities from across Europe.

One of the key findings of the MAGPIE project was that knowledge about port innovations is often fragmented and difficult to access, making it challenging for ports and other stakeholders to keep track of emerging developments and understand which innovations are ready for implementation.

To address this challenge, the Green Innovation Compass was created as a central knowledge base combining knowledge of innovations, lessons learned and implementation insights in one accessible place. The platform therefor serves as a lasting legacy of the MAGPIE project, ensuring that the knowledge generated over the years remains available to the wider port community. More information about MAGPIE, go to magpie-ports-eu.

The Green Innovation Compass is not intended to be a static repository of project results. Instead, it is designed as a living and evolving platform that continues to grow beyond the lifetime of MAGPIE.

To maintain its long-term relevance, the platform encourages contributions from the port community. Users are invited to share knowledge, experiences, lessons learned and insights related to innovations and implementation practices. Through continuous collaboration, the Green Innovation Compass can remain a dynamic, up-to-date and valuable resource for the entire port ecosystem.