The Maritime Digital Innovation Demo Day, held on April 15 in Hamburg as part of the German-Latvian Port Days, brought together Latvian and German partners to present practical digital and autonomous technology solutions developed under the bilateral Memorandum of Understanding on Digital Innovation and Resilience in Ports.
The event demonstrated how the partnership between the ports of Riga and Hamburg is translating institutional cooperation into deployable technologies.
Dr Melanie Leonhard, Hamburg’s Minister for Economic Affairs, Labour and Innovation, described the Demo Day as evidence of the partnership moving from declarations to tangible results, framing the collaboration as a signal of technological ambition and solidarity relevant to the wider Baltic Sea region.
Latvian Transport Minister Atis Å vinka emphasised the centrality of digital and autonomous technologies to future port management, citing safety, efficiency and adaptability as the core imperatives driving innovation.
Among the solutions presented, LVR Flote and the Port of Hamburg Fleet, in partnership with ISM GmbH, developed the Hybrid Fleet Insight platform, a digital tool enabling data-driven decisions on vessel operating modes, battery system usage and maintenance scheduling for hybrid vessels.
The solution aims to improve operational efficiency and reduce resource consumption across hybrid fleets.
LVR Flote also collaborated with Hamburg hydrographers and researchers from Riga Technical University to develop automated hydrographic data exchange systems, demonstrated using the DIII and CHICAGO vessels and the USV OTTER unmanned surface vehicle, significantly accelerating data flow and reducing manual processing requirements.
LMT Group presented two complementary solutions: a private 5G network architecture providing secure, high-performance connectivity across port areas, and a computer vision platform using artificial intelligence to analyse real-time video, enabling ports to calculate COâ‚‚ emissions, identify high-impact processes and support data-driven sustainability decisions.
LMT Group President Juris Binde highlighted Latvia’s competitive strengths in smart port solution development and described the Hamburg presentation as confirmation that Latvian innovations are capable of competing at the level of the world’s largest ports.
Infrastructure monitoring solutions were also featured, including drone systems adapted for port environments, Hamburg Port Authority’s SPOT robotic inspection platform for bridges, tunnels and hard-to-reach structures, an aerial drone for high-altitude infrastructure inspection, and SUBmerge Baltic’s underwater drone capability.
Further joint drone testing across both ports is planned to build the datasets needed for continued development of artificial intelligence and computer vision algorithms.
