The National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) plays a crucial role coordinating the EcoShipyard (ESY) project, a project dedicated to developing innovative solutions for shipyards that reduce their environmental impact, increase their energy efficiency, optimize their operations, measure and thus reduce the non-operational environmental impacts from shipping. The ESY project aims to contribute to the EU’s environmental and climate goals, provide valuable insights and best practices for sustainable shipbuilding, thus benefiting both the environment and industry.
NTUA involvement in the ESY Project
NTUA’s contributions to the ESY project are multifaceted. As leader of Work Package (WP) 1 – Project Coordination and Administration, NTUA will ensure the effective coordination/management of activities such as a detailed project plan, a plan for effective communication and reporting, monitoring technical and scientific activities, identification/management of technical/scientific risks, management of intellectual property, the data management plan, and the data repository. In WP1 NTUA also coordinates the development of comprehensive frameworks for a KPI management system, quality management system, and risk analysis. NTUA also produces detailed user requirements for all WPs and project workflow.
NTUA is also task leader under various WPs. For WP1, it is tasked with overall ESY project coordination, management, and administration (T1.1) ensuring that the ESY project is delivered successfully and that all stakeholders are engaged throughout the project lifecycle. NTUA is also responsible for the ESY project’s technical, scientific and innovation management (T1.2), ensuring that the project meets its objectives and fulfils its deliverables. NTUA is tasked with developing the strategy that addresses the requirements of Horizon Open Research Data Activities (T1.3), ensuring that the ESY project’s outcomes are not just innovative but that its data strategy is compliant with national and EU legislation (including GDPR). Closing out WP1, NTUA provides a thorough and objective review of the technical aspects of the ESY project (T1.5), ensuring that ESY’s technical aspects are well defined, structured, and achievable.
For WPs 2 and 3, NTUA is responsible for creating an LCA and LCC strategy for sustainable end-of-life ship management (T2.3), which considers both environmental and economic impacts. NTUA identifies and analyses typical shipbuilding, retrofit and dismantling processes and resources in shipyards (D3.1), to develop tools that identify their environmental impacts. The NTUA proposes suitable KPIs and develops a Shipyard Environmental Performance Indicator (SEPI) (T3.4) that unifies the approaches used to assess and measure individual aspects of environmental impacts from shipyards and shipbuilding processes into one metric.
Lastly, NTUA seeks to proactively predict potential disruptions to ESY processes and systems, and develop recovery strategies (T6.2), ensuring that the ESY project can meet its sustainability goals while being on time and within budget.
Environmental Leadership and Inspiration
Through the ESY project, the NTUA underscores its environmental commitment by directly addressing the environmental and technical challenges of shipyard operations.
Additionally, NTUA also reinforces its role as a leader in maritime research while seeking to inspire a new generation of engineers to contribute their efforts and expertise towards sustainable solutions for this vital global industry.
