EP4: Forging an Alliance

In 2020, the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH) surveyed its members looking at their compliance with the IMO Facilitation on International Maritime Traffic (FAL) Convention and found that only one-third of respondents met the requirements to have digital port community systems in place. This followed the International Maritime Organization (IMO) revelation in November 2020 that only 49 of the 174 IMO member states have working systems. Patrick Verhoeven, IAPH managing director, and Martin Humphreys of The World Bank discuss working together to advance digitalization and decarbonization in ports and give developing countries a fair business opportunity. Speakers: Martin Humphreys - Lead Transport Economist, South Asia Unit of the Transport Global Practice, The World Bank Patrick Verhoeven - Managing Director, International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH) Ines Nastali - Senior Custom Publishing Editor, S&P Global Market Intelligence Martin Humphreys is a lead transport economist in the South Asia Unit of the Transport Global Practice of the World Bank. He has been working in the transport sector for nearly 30 years in a number of different countries/regions. His experience covers roads, railways, inland waterways and maritime ports, public private partnerships, and trade and transport facilitation, in post-conflict, fragile, and low- and middle-income countries. Martin has a first degree in Economics, and a Master’s Degree and PhD in Transport Economics. Patrick Verhoeven is the managing director of the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH), responsible for policy and strategy. The organisation represents about 170 ports and some 140 port-related businesses in 90 countries worldwide. Prior to joining IAPH in 2017, Patrick spent twenty-four years in Brussels representing the interests of shipowners, port authorities, terminal operators and ship agents at EU level. He started his career in 1991 with the Antwerp-based ship agent Grisar & Velge. Patrick holds a PhD in applied economics and a bachelor’s in law from the University of Antwerp. Ines Nastali joined IHS Markit (now S&P Global) at the London headquarters in September 2018 as the editor of Dredging and Ports Construction magazine before taking over as editor of Ports & Harbors, the membership publication of the International Association of Ports and Harbors. She is responsible for the delivery of a bi-monthly magazine, always on the lookout for the latest market trends in order to keep readers informed, as well as the supplement production for all maritime publications. Making use of her experience in multi-media and data-driven storytelling, her focus for the company's maritime publications portfolio has been to establish the utilisation of IHS Markit's rich dredging, port and maritime data and to translate those datasets into interactive and print visualisations to give an insight into fleet data, port infrastructure developments and shipbuilding trends as well as casualty incidents. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in technical journalism from the Hochschule Bremen, Germany, and a Master of Arts in science journalism from London's City University.