Maritime Resilience Analysis tools: Deep Port and the Port Analysis Dashboard (PAD)

The Department is publishing this PIN to notify and engage with the market to understand the capacity, capability and experience of suppliers to provide the digital expertise necessary to refresh, update and maintain the data sets within an existing Departmental resilience tool called Deep Port, which was first built over ten years ago. The tool is designed to gather various strands of data in one place to create a more holistic interpretation of the flow of goods and people through the UK’s main ports. As a result of the UK leaving the EU, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on industry and transport (both on land and at sea), as well as the growing risks arising from climate change and risks to the security of supply chains from UK ports to the rest of the mainland, the importance of Deep Port as a tool to inform policy decision-making at all levels has become crucial. It will be an important tool to support the Government’s commitment to build robust resilience across the sector, supporting and protecting the UK from future challenges and risks. By combining this data with key port profiles, transport hubs, such as road and rail, flood plains, and types of goods, targeted response and solution becomes quickly accessible, enabling effective policy decisions to be made. The Department would also consider offers to create a new tool as substitute if a suitable proposal is presented and could be delivered within the very tight timeframe.

Additionally, the Department would also be looking to incorporate a secondary tool to increase the scope and effectiveness of Deep Port, but in real-time, rather than as a downloadable data set. This would be a system designed to capture real-time data related to port resilience from existing data feeds/sensors (PAD).

The overall objectives are

• to have a tool(s) that, once fully functional, can be transferred over to the Department in a user-friendly format which enables the tool(s) to continue to be of ongoing value and,
• to ensure that the integrity of any data can be assured so it may be confidently provided to senior managers and Ministers to better inform policy-making decisions.

Provision must be made to train and advise relevant DfT staff so such transition can take place seamlessly. The overall contract length for updating the tool is likely to be 2 years, but the Department would be strongly supportive of activating Deep Port much sooner than that, ideally by the end of 2021 as the UK reaches the EU transition deadline.