A fruitful meeting on the implemention of the Port Performance Indicators: Selection and Measurement (PPRISM) project between PortEconomics members acting as academic partners, the European Sea Port Organisation (ESPO), and the European Commission took place in Brussels last week.

With the European Commission co-funded PPRISM project delivering a much interesting approach, the partners set down the foundations for establishing further actions that would benefit all those involved in the port sector.

Port authorities and port community stakeholders take pride in the important contribution seaports deliver to European trade and welfare. But is anyone outside the industry aware of this? And what does the port sector really know itself about its overall performance, apart from the number of tonnes and passengers handled?

As the PPRISM project coming closer to its completion this will change. At the end of 2011 the project will deliver a Port Sector Performance Dashboard capable to measure performance trends in the European port sector.   As such, PPRISM is not looking at the performance of individual ports and terminals, but focuses mainly on the performance of the port system as a whole. During the past year European port authorities together with business and societal stakeholders engaged in an extensive assessment of potential indicators. This has resulted in a shortlist of fourteen indicators tested through a EU-wide pilot test for the actual feasibility of the selected indicators and for data collection at European level. 58 Port authorities replied to a user-friendly form with data requirements for the selected indicators.

The members of the PortEconomics team involved along with ESPO intend to take the create a culture of performance measurement and reporting in the sector which today is far from being general practice.

More about PPRISM and soon the conclusions and recommendation @ the PPRISM webpage.

A personal message from ESPO Secretary General Patrick Verhoeven on PPRISM can be seen @ ESPO YouTube channel.