From Startup Discovery to Port Innovation

For those who are not familiar with the R framework, that's a key, not only for startup founders, but for investors in order to measure, to do due diligence and measure the health of any startup. So do more research, start maybe with lean startup, right? Then go to customer discovery, the mom test.

You were asking like, okay, how much of it is questions to the user, right? Versus like prompts, Eric Ries and Steve Blank, which are the creators and designers of the lean startup method, will always say the CEO needs to have face -to -face conversations with the users, period. No survey, no focus group. It is face -to -face conversations because from there is where they're going to get the market fit that you need in order to build the architecture. So strongly recommend it.

but I'm not here to talk about entrepreneurship which is my background

PortMiami’s Operational Challenge

I'm here to talk about innovation and the work that I do at Port Miami I was hoping to have a little bit of light but light is gone so Port Miami which for those are not familiar is in the heart of downtown it's an island and there is

no coincidence we're talking about silos right so I started my position ten months ago and part of I'm going to show you today is our vision that I was able to design moving forward and what you see there is one interconnected digital ecosystem so the silos

again machines are becoming better machines therefore humans need to become better humans if we intentionally don't design an architecture in order for the silos to speak to each other that's not going to happen no matter how much money and resources you have so we humans need to become better humans in the sense of intentionally looking for those connections.

So Port Miami, for those who are not familiar, which is an island that is over there, it is based on the heart of downtown. So location is, everything that I'm going to show here is not only why Port Miami is so important, but also these benefits at some point have become our constraints, right?

So we are in the heart of downtown. We are our 520 acre island. It's a man -made island. We don't have more space than that 520 acre.

And it's dual operations in terms of we manage cargo, so containers. A TEU is 20 equivalent units, so containers that are 20 foot long, but also more. That's how we measure the containers, but also we are the cruise capital of the world I'm I don't know if you've been able to travel to cruise from Miami What does that mean is that no other port in the world? has more passengers than Port of Miami

and The destination right Miami has become like a hot destination in the fast to five to ten years years. We, every day, we have more and more events happening in downtown. We have the Kaseya Center right there, right? We have the marathon. We have ultra. We have crossfit competitions, you name it.

So why is that relevant or important? Well, because that impacts our operations, right? And despite that, in 2025, we were able to move 1 .15 million TEUs, 20 equivalent units or containers, that's how we measure throughput, 8 .56 million passengers, 31 high volume operational days, what does that mean? Days in which we have more than seven cruise ships at the same time onboarding and downloading passengers while we have also container container operations and in a 520 acre piece of land.

What does that mean? It means that physically we cannot grow, but we can grow intellectually in terms of intelligence. So hence the importance of what Irina was mentioning before. So every system, Edward Deming says that every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets, right? Right. So you saw that how despite our constraints, we are producing those numbers.

And by the way, Port of Miami is a department of Miami -Dade County, where one of two departments that actually generate revenue versus consume or take revenue from you guys, taxpayers. Right. So not only that, but what else I was going to say? Oh, yeah, it's a department, so, okay, yeah, now I remember. That happens to me a lot.

A Landlord Port Business Model

So we generate our revenue, and our business model is that we're a landlord port. We don't run our operations. Our operations are run by the tenants, which are either on the container side, on the cargo side. We have CFCT, POMTOC, and Seaboard as the operators of those terminal, container terminals, And we have the cruise lines, right, as the operators of the cruise terminals whenever they are in that berth sign, okay?

So we make money two ways. One, leasing the land and throughput. What is throughput? Amount of containers, amount of passengers. That's how we make money. And we're in charge that the environment, the ecosystem, right, the infrastructure is in place. So the cruise lines and the ship carriers can actually run their operations.

So the reason why I say this is because, yes, despite those conditions, we've been able to be the cruise capital of the world and have that amount of containers. However, now we're seeing the impact when we see congestion, traffic congestion with a downtown and I -95 and it's backed up and the passengers are complaining because I don't know if the cruise line is going to leave me. right and then only in day it starts posting videos of the congestion of the port with the downtown Miami and it's a cluster right so we have to be aware of those situations because that goes directly not only is a PR kind of challenge because that goes directly to the mayor but also passengers start saying I'm not going from Miami anymore I'm going to Port Everglades I'm going went to Cape Canario.

So for two years, Cape Canario has taken the cruise capital of the world title from us. So we have to be aware of where we are today.

Why Innovation Is Necessary

And when I got here and I started having these conversations, right, even though I'm not doing, this is not my company, I do these user interviews. And one of the legacy employees said, I've been here for 36 years and what you're doing is a waste of time and money.

What is a waste of time and money? Innovation, right? So it's like, okay, sure, of course. You know what?

36 years ago, right, the port didn't have 8 .6 million passengers. Today, this is fiscal year 2026, we have 10 million passengers. We're the first, again, port in the whole world that manages 10 million passengers. We just set that bar even higher, from 8 .56 to 10 million.

Back in the day, you didn't have this challenge. You didn't have the cruise ships are now bigger and bigger. They have ships that can hold around 60 ,000 passengers a ship. So if you have an increase of 450 % of high volume operational days, meaning crews that are, when we have on the port 7 to 10 cruise ships of that amount of passengers, that's going to impact not only traffic, the island, but also our staff. half.

We're talking that now with more frequency, we have to deploy safety and security, sherry officer, operational, people, stevedores, right? They are going to be getting your luggage and also putting the luggage in the ships, so on and so forth. So that's going to impact stress, that's going to impact turnover, and so on and so forth, right?

So once again, Again, even though we cannot grow physically, we need to grow on intelligence, right? So how do we go from certainty, what you're doing, it's a waste of time and money, to curiosity? And because of that, I always like to bring, right, the concept of insanity, which is? Doing the same thing over and over again differently. Correct. That's the key. Not just the first part, right? Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

So we cannot continue doing the same thing that we've been doing for the past 36 years. Something needs to evolve, right?

Building an Integrated Digital Ecosystem

And hence, I developed this framework, which is a framework that I've been able to collect from different ports around the world and different even industries, okay? okay, because I'm in different groups depending on the technology, based on how do we mitigate the silo type of operation into something that is more integrated, intelligent, and allows for sustainable growth.

Connectivity, Coverage, and Security

First and foremost, you can think of this as the Maslow hierarchy of needs, right, where the first one is physiological needs, right, and evolves until self -realization, So, for us at port, it is, well, do we have full coverage?

There are areas of the port where we don't have Wi -Fi or cellular connectivity, and why is that important? I ask. Metrics. What about it? You have to monitor what's going on. We don't even have the capacity to connect with anything, sensor, camera, or whatever.

We have hurricanes and so on. If we have WiFi, that would be great. Because we have also a lot of yachts, do you manage as well some... No. We're crews and cargo. But surveillance is key. Water surveillance.

We are what is known at the federal level as critical infrastructure. Okay, just like the airport, anything related to cyber security or any potential influence over our operations, cranes, shore power, so on and so forth, it has to be one surveillance. Anything approaching to the port, like a terrorist or even a swimmer, right? It could be - Sharks as well? No. but we do have underwater monitoring by the way so yes coverage right so hence the importance of having courage in order to be able to survey survey and to have connectivity right with cameras or sensors in order to collect data but

From Data Collection to Automation

then how do we integrate those different hardwares and systems into a standard data lake that allows then for us to interact meaning workflow automation right integrate things that we do into our operations an example of that could be okay there is a camera and when there's nobody in this space it then sends a signal to the building management system in order to adjust the AC right now it's pretty hard right but when we all leave it's gonna be potentially, if there is no building management system at, I don't know, let's say 69 Fahrenheit, pretty cold, energy is going to be wasted there. So dim the lights. These lights are producing a lot of heat, again, consumption of energy. So if there's a connectivity and the camera is able to capture if there is a human or not and then send the signal, dim the lights, adjust the AC, we have a direct return on investment in terms of saving energy and now you exponentially grow that through 11 terminals right a whole island there's gonna be a lot of savings does that make sense yes so that's one case now I'm gonna show you I'm gonna tell

Computer Vision for Port Operations

you about a current example that we are implementing at the port so part of the the county developed this entity, it's called the Miami Dade Innovation Authority, in order to run innovative challenges across different departments, right?

And one of the challenges was, okay, can we track the movement of a cargo? Okay, why is that? Well, even though our tenants are the cargo operators, we have no way to audit if the throughput that they're telling us is the actual throughput, okay? They are the ones who manage the whole operation. So we always go with whatever they tell us.

And then when we go to the cranes, it's like in order to audit, well, it's a stack of paper, handwritten, in terms of number of movements, exactly. That was my phase when I got there, I was like, what? And I saw the stack of papers and I was like, how long do you take to reconcile that? 30 days if we're fast, if there's no mistake.

Can you imagine if we have then coverage where the cranes are and with the cameras and a computer vision software we're able then to monitor movement and based on the movement we're able to then audit our financials and automatically send the invoice to the operators? Money.

Does the port put in the actual container? No. We have the manifesto, the total manifesto, but not necessarily because people think a ship arrives and all the containers come down. No. They do movements. Yeah.

I worked in logistics for a long time and this is bringing me back not great members, but that's why I see that still hasn't changed. CBP has more information, but they don't share either. Yeah, but CBP will have it because of the imports when they're not - Correct. They have to nationalize. Like if you're coming from Puerto Rico, then you won't be there.

Real quick, hearing you talk about the Fort, it reminds me of this company called Bricada. How much does the Fort use AI facial recognition? So there's where I'm going with this, right?

So computer vision, it's basically AI. We're not using facial recognition. We're using all the type of objective identification for other purposes that I'm going to share.

Shifting Focus from Cargo Visibility to Congestion

So, we deployed, we had four companies that are focused on computer AI, computer vision, and we deployed those cameras across the port. However, we identified that cargo visibility, it was a nice to have, but it was not a need to have.

It was not the most pressing, urgent problem, so I was able to then identify and transition from cargo visibility to congestion, to traffic control management and congestion, right? And then ask these companies if through the pilot they were open to expand the scope and the timeline in order to analyze this, right?

So Grid Matrix is an AI video analytics, computer vision software that runs through our current infrastructure of cameras. We have 1600 cameras around the port and they are currently running only on 26 okay and then basically what they're able to they are camera agnostic so it doesn't matter that the tech okay what it matters is the point of view the view

of the camera right and then what are we want to identify right so we wanted to identify volume like number of cars like if it's a it's a vehicle if it's a truck a provisional truck or a container truck if it's a motorcycle if it's a pedestrian right because sometimes if there's traffic tourists they are like they tell the uber leave me here and they start walking through the bridge that's a hazard right somebody can actually hit the the pedestrian and we don't want that so what

this software does is it starts analyzing per lane right the road utilization and we are able to then Then identify TNCs, which are like the rideshares, the Ubers. How long are they staying? And then develop metrics, what she was saying.

Designing AI Around Operational Bottlenecks

So the AI enterprise software usually focus on the model rather than focusing on the operational bottleneck. And if you are a developer or you are a startup, I want you to take that into consideration. I want you to think about that, okay? Going back to who's the user and what is the job that is getting done, right?

So it's important because for the cargo visibility, it's like, we don't care about that data. But for the traffic, it's like, yeah, we need to know if a TNC, a ride share, is spending more than 10 minutes in the curb. Curb utilization is key. If there is an unauthorized vehicle stopped on a side that is causing congestion and traffic.

So now we're able to develop all these metrics, something else that I learned, which is level of service. All our highways, based on the Federal Department of Transportation, have something that is called level of service from A, B, C, D, E, and F, which is the flow of traffic, right? how fast X amount of vehicles what they are able to go from point A to point B okay so now we're able to put this metric into the software into the AI in order to keep track of that so we're able also to send notifications in real

time to law enforcement we things that need maintenance because something failed right versus like spending a week and people pass through that and nobody does does anything, is there a fire hazard, congestion, suspicious activities, stopped vehicles, construction,

MOT deployment, now I'm able to see which MOTs model of transportation works better than others in which days, we're able to identify there's some days we have more vehicles and no MOT, and the traffic actually works best than when we have less vehicles and MOT, so we have to ask ourselves, wait, wait, is the staff that we're sending helping or actually making it worse?

Who was there? What kind of MOT work? Which one didn't? So on and so forth.

Oh, and I apologize because I said I was going to stay still and I'm moving a lot.

Real-Time Traffic Intelligence and Incremental Improvement

So going back to the AI, it's about identification of objects, right? But also performance, speed, volume, bottlenecks. We're able to integrate now with LiDAR, which is a laser, okay, in order to measure distance and congestion, Q.

We will be able to then integrate with the birth schedule, meaning how many ships we have when and now predict, prevent, right? What's the impact, simulate and model how the traffic is going to look like X days, right? So on and so forth.

So we are implementing something that is called, I'll get back to you something that is called the 1 % incremental innovation, which is We're not gonna be able in the short term Develop a flyover right ideal scenario. That's millions of dollars construction project. We don't have that time We don't have the luxury we have we're gonna have we already have 10 million passengers in this season that just started, right?

So can this software allows to identify the hotspots the 1 % that if we accumulated at least we we improve on 20%, that's like a lot in terms of traffic congestion. Does that make sense? So that's the model that we're implementing. Question?

Yeah, I was gonna ask that, like how does the camera react to accidents?

Yeah, so two ways, right? It sends a notification, a text, identify the AI, by the way, for those that are technical everything because we are a critical infrastructure everything is being analyzed on -premise we have the server on -premise we have a video management system right that provides the raw data that raw data gets streams to the server that process this information on a meta level okay in the metadata and then in periods of 15 seconds okay is then notifies sends an an email and a text to those involved in,

we have a C3, which is a control center in Doral that manages all our fire, sheriff, so on and so forth. And it contacts first responders also, right? If nobody has contacted, sends a notification in the email right away. This is happening, and sends the link of the video so you can see what happened and where, yeah.

Yeah, and also we were able to, with the cameras, actually something, a project that I think Junior is working on, like with GIS, is that correct? Yes, being able to identify the exact location, latitude and longitude in order to then, now we have a location, now we know where it is, what's happening where.

Any questions?