NextPort is the technological partner and digital twin of the EU-ETS Observatory of State Ports, the initiative called by State Ports to measure the effect of carbon costs on maritime transport and port competitiveness. The company develops and operates the data platform that underpins the consortium's analysis, and its technology is behind the second report of the observatory, published with data up to March 2026, which estimates a ten-point decline in the share of major entry ports in the European Union in long-distance transport, from 67% to 57% between the first quarter of 2023 and the same period in 2026.
The platform managed by NextPort combines four types of information: vessel tracking, port call data, emissions records, and intelligence on maritime services. Based on this, the system reconstructs the behavior of the transport network and allows the observatory to test its working hypothesis, the possible diversion of traffic from community ports to nearby hubs not subject to the same regulatory costs. A digital twin is, in general terms, a virtual replica of a physical system — in this case, the network of ports, vessels, and maritime services — fed with real data and continuously updated, allowing one to observe its behavior as it evolves.
The main technical novelty of this second edition is the incorporation of tracking at the container level. With this layer of data, the platform can connect the movements of vessels with the movements of cargo, that is, track the merchandise after its arrival at European ports and neighboring ports outside the Union. This traceability allows analysts to identify three phenomena that until now were difficult to isolate: the rerouting of traffic, connectivity weakening, and possible activity gains by non-community hubs.
The difference is relevant from a methodological point of view. An analysis based solely on the behavior of vessels detects when a call disappears or a service changes rotation but does not reveal what happens to the cargo: a container can continue arriving at the same final destination by another route, through a transshipment at a different port or a different feeder connection. By descending to the container level, the platform allows one to observe changes in port choice, transshipment activity, and feeder connections, thus distinguishing between a simple reorganization of services and an effective displacement of merchandise flows.
The observatory in which this technology is integrated is an initiative of State Ports, the public body that coordinates state-owned ports in Spain, developed alongside Shipping Business Consultant (SBC), the Centre for Transport Innovation (CENIT), and NextPort itself. Within this division of functions, the technology company is responsible for both the development and the ongoing operation of the platform, which turns its digital twin into the infrastructure on which the series of reports rests.
For NextPort, the second report of the observatory shows how digital technology can transform operational, emissions, and container data into practical evidence for the authorities. This evidence, according to the company, serves three purposes: to evaluate the functioning of the European emissions trading regime, protect the competitiveness of ports, and react early to undesirable movements in the transport network.
The case illustrates the role that digital twins and data platforms are beginning to occupy in monitoring public policies of maritime transport. The evaluation of the EU-ETS requires continuous, comparable data series with sufficient detail to distinguish short-term movements from structural changes, and that function falls on tools capable of integrating heterogeneous sources, from vessel positioning to the route of each container. The continuity of the series of reports from the observatory will depend, to a large extent, on the ability of that technological infrastructure to sustain and expand the level of detail achieved in this second edition.