The Academic Work and Coordination Mission, held at the University of Informatics Sciences (UCI) in Havana, Cuba, between September and December 2024, marked a new phase in the development of the PortADa project. The main objective was to consolidate the general research procedure and to transfer to the Cuban team the methodological and technical outcomes achieved during the Mar del Plata Summer School, thereby ensuring the proper integration of the Havana node within the overall project.

During this mission, key topics related to the development and implementation of work procedures were addressed, including:

• The development of a validation procedure for correction tasks, which facilitates quality control and standardisation in the processing of historical images..
• The search in local archives for the necessary elements to validate the sources from Havana.
• The creation of a corpus of processed images, enabling comparison of the results of different types of correction and the establishment of best practices for future phases of the project..
• The development and testing of an image discriminator, a tool that automatically identifies what type of correction each image requires and whether it is suitable for processing.

As a result of these tasks, the research teams at each port now have a more robust environment for advancing the processing of digital images, using the software developed by the PortADa technical team.

During the mission, two academic outreach seminars were held for local lecturers, students, and researchers, as well as another at the University of Cienfuegos, with the aim of promoting the project and presenting its initial findings. In particular, methodological and technical advances were shared, along with the case study on the Port of Havana—an essential component within the maritime network under investigation by PortADa.

The Academic Mission in Havana consolidated collaborative work between historians and computer scientists and helped strengthen the interdisciplinary and multilateral approach that defines the PortADa project. This phase was key not only to the continued development of tools and methodologies but also to reinforcing the project’s international research network.