Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux: Establishing its community-driven digital twin with Google Cloud

About Grand Port Maritimede Bordeaux

Located on the banks of the largest estuary in Europe, Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux is spread across seven terminals. With revenues of €46 million, it generates more than 15,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Industries: Government & Public Sector

Location: France

Products: Google Cloud

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About Skale-5

Skale-5 focuses on providing specific and complementary services, based around three offerings:

- The migration of web applications to a public cloud provider and particularly Google Cloud,
- 24/7 outsourcing of web applications hosted on a public cloud provider
- Technical assistance by delegation of DevOps personnel certified by cloud providers

With Google Cloud's Cloud HPC toolkit, Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux initiated the digital twin project for the Gironde ecosystem to create simulations in a high-performance and user-friendly environment.

Google Cloud results

An open cloud fulfilling the open source development needs of Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux and water stakeholders
Supplementing the territory's resilience factor against climate change challenges
A community tool, accessible to all port-related and environmental stakeholders
A flexible business model, adapted to provisioning high-performance computing resources on demand
Decision support tools to evaluate public policies and territorial environmental strategies
Toward a model of collective and shared digital governance, replicable in other territories
An environmentally responsible solution thanks to Google Cloud's carbon neutrality

Creating a digital commons to predict the evolution of the Garonne river

At the gateway to the capital of the Aquitaine region in France, Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux is the hub of a dense and multimodal communication network. Spread across seven terminals located on the largest estuary in Europe, it plays a major role in local economic development. With more than 500 hectares available for industrial and logistical purposes, it records revenues of more than €46 million, and generates more than 15,000 direct and indirect jobs.

With the improvement of navigation conditions, logistics facilities, new industrial facilities, and digitization, as well as the simplification of access procedures, all carried out in collaboration with public and private partners, the port's sustainable development policy contributes to this dynamic region's overall influence. At the same time, it promotes the competitiveness of its businesses while ensuring port activity respects the principles of sustainable development.

Its strategy for the next 5 years is, therefore, based on the development of alternative energy and new procedures related to its industrial and logistic activities, to:
- reduce the carbon footprint of the metropolitan area of Bordeaux
- impulse a carbon neutral reindustrialization approach, for the benefit of the region

The River's Digital Twin responds to a need to move toward a symbiosis between port and industrial activities, and the preservation of the environment in a context of climate change and decarbonization, which concerns the entire territory.

Protecting the estuary's ecosystem and preserving its capacity

It's within the context of this economic and sustainable development policy that the digital twin project was born, with support from Google Cloud. It all started in 2014 with the development of the first digital model designed to improve the port's capacity to receive vessels.

Like all estuaries, Gironde is subject to natural phenomena, such as large concentrations of sediments carried by the river, which form mud, which stratifies and poses navigation difficulties. This phenomenon is relatively important in the largest estuary in Europe. And the prospects for climate change will not improve this phenomenon and may even degrade aquatic life.

"To maintain the depth of the channel at a level sufficient to accommodate ships safely, we have to continuously drag the mud settling at the bottom 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," explains Fabrice Klein, Innovation Manager at Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux. "This work costs between €12 and €13 million each year. To better focus our actions and anticipate the intensified risk of mud concentrations due to climate change, we created a digital model some years ago. Even though it was very effective, it required expert IT skills for its use as well high-performance computing. As a result, this first model was mainly used by engineering consultancies, which was quite frustrating. In other words, we had the tool, but not the technical environment needed to use it."

A digital model accessible to all partners

The frustration of the management team at Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux only grew, since the initial idea was to have a tool that not only served all partners involved in port activity, but also all environmental stakeholders, with sediment management in particular playing a fundamental role in the functioning of the estuary's ecosystem.

The idea of the river's digital twin, accessible to everyone, gradually came to life. The innovative approach adopted by Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux is based on a virtual replica of the estuary that reproduces its physicochemical phenomena via measurements collected by sensors.

"Our aim was to create an accessible solution, both in terms of the availability of computing resources and user-friendly interfaces, that allowed all stakeholders to look at the future of port activity, and that was a catalyst for the development of the region's resilience in the face of climate change."

—Fabrice Klein, Innovation Manager at Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux

Keen to bring together all stakeholders through the creation of a community tool, Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux initiated this ambitious project at the end of 2021, with support from the France Relance recovery plan. In the form of an "innovation partnership," it unites all water-related stakeholders (including Agence de l'eau Adour-Garonne [the Adour-Garonne water agency], EPIDOR [the administrative authority for the Dordogne Bassin], SHOM [the Naval Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service], SMEAG [the Garonne joint association for research and development], SMIDDEST [the joint association for sustainable development of the Gironde estuary], and VNF [the French waterways authority]), assisted by experts including OFB (the French Biodiversity Agency), Cerema (the French public agency for developing public expertise in urban planning, regional cohesion, and ecological and energy transition), Laboratoire EPOC (the ocean and continental environments and paleoenvironments lab at Bordeaux University), and Pilotage de la Gironde (the river navigation service based in Bordeaux).

"Our aim was to create an accessible solution, both in terms of the availability of computing resources and user-friendly interfaces, that allowed all stakeholders to look at the future of the river and port activity, and that was a catalyst for the development of the region's resistance in the face of climate change," Fabrice Klein explains.

Over the course of 2022, following a rigorous tender selection process and a 3-days hackathon to identify the most innovative projects, the innovation partnership moved toward an open source digital twin run on Google Cloud with a goal of rapid implementation.

Google Cloud chosen for its open cloud and flexible HPC solutions

"We didn't have the capacity to deploy and maintain HPC data centers, or the technical experts needed to operate them. Moreover, even though we were leading the project initiative, our objective was to mutualize effort and share results with many users of this digital twin. In reality, the aim of this project is to share its governance and ensure its sustainability through the creation of an independent structure.
In this context, the idea of relying on the cloud was quickly established, as was open source development so the code could be shared with all stakeholders. After some comparative tests, we concluded that the technical environment offered by Google Cloud was the most favorable for our project and allow rapid implementation," clarifies Fabrice Klein.

"After some comparative tests, we concluded that the technical environment offered by Google Cloud was the most favorable for our project."

—Fabrice Klein, Innovation Manager at Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux

Several factors played a role in this decision, including Google Cloud's Cloud HPC toolkit. It's easy to use, and allows for cost optimization while providing a high-performance and flexible HPC base. This was a particularly important point for Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux, as the business model for the digital twin stated each stakeholder could benefit from on demand computing resources that are provisioned and invoiced in terms of actual use.

At the same time, Google Cloud's open cloud fit well into the open source approach adopted by Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux by integrating managed open source components. "We were won over by how it works. In addition, Google Cloud claims carbon neutral," adds Fabrice Klein. "This environmental aspect is particularly important to us, especially since Google Cloud is aiming to run all its data centers on carbon-free energy, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, by 2030."

Ultimately, "We know that the notion of a sovereign Cloud is very important for France and Europe, in particular for obtaining calls for projects which move our project forward. In this context, the work carried out on the trusted cloud by Google Cloud and Thales through S3NS played a role in our decision. The creation of this structure is an indication of Google Cloud's trajectory, which clearly indicates its desire to evolve toward a sovereign cloud. We fully appreciate the direction this is taking because the next step will be for us to seek to provide guarantees of sovereignty to continue development and facilitate replication on other rivers," states the Innovation Manager of Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux.

A scalable and original project in its technological and community-based approach

1. How to integrate TELEMAC into Google Cloud

2. How to optimize performance and costs

3. How to make the solution accessible to a non-technical audience

Launched in April 2023, the River's Digital Twin project was established with support from Skale-5, a Google Partner that oversaw the development. Comprising several complementary interconnected platforms that are open to exchanges with other external information systems, the project already incorporates tools for scientists wishing to perform concurrent simulations requiring HPC resources, customizable workspaces for local authorities where they can invite partners to carry out simulation-related work or research, models enabling planning offices to accelerate simulation cycles, and intuitive decision-making assistance tools aimed at all decision makers.

"It's a real success for the Jumeaux Numériques du Fleuve project and its community. Efforts are now focused on the development of communities and the establishment of a share governance for this first open-source digital commons of a vast natural heritage. This operational service is accessible to everyone to simulate the Gironde estuary or other rivers, such as the St. Lawrence which has just been the subject of a demonstration during the event "Web à Quebec." These digital commons are intended to provide answers to public policy questions and evaluate territorial strategies to better prepare for the impacts of climate change."

—Fabrice Klein, Innovation Manager at Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux

Especially attached to the community spirit of the project, the group of contributors added the source code to a GitLab cluster in the region, so any stakeholder can customize their use of the platform.

Not long after its launch, the project was awarded the "Ville et territoire" (city and region) trophy by a jury of experts at the BIM WORLD event in recognition of its originality, as well as its innovative and community-based approach. It was also selected to participate in WAQ (Web à Québec), a major digital event in the French speaking community that brings together stakeholders from the web industry. "It's a real success for the Jumeaux Numériques du Fleuve project and its community. To our knowledge, this is the first operational digital commons of a vast natural heritage," concludes Fabrice Klein.

Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.

About Grand Port Maritimede Bordeaux

Industries: Government & Public Sector

Location: France

About Skale-5

Google Cloud