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Risultati finali
The CEN/ISSS Workshop on 'Multimodal End-to-End Tracking and Tracing' set out to design and implement an infrastructure to provide continuous information about the current position or status of transport goods at a piece level.
The Workshop particularly focussed on:
- Item level tracking & tracing. That is, the granularity of the track & trace function will be adjustable, from the individual item (e.g., a parcel) up to a container or a vehicle;
- 'Near real-time' (continuous) tracking. Status and position information will be made available at anytime (not just at e.g. terminals or hubs).
Easy integration of the new information infrastructure into external was another key design criterion. Seamless interoperation between these systems on the one hand and the new tracking & tracing system has to be guaranteed.
The Workshop produced two CEN Workshop Agreements (CWAs):
- Agreed Requirements on Multimodal Tracking and Tracing Systems;
- Functional Specification of an Open Multimodal Tracking and Tracing System.
The former discusses the various aspects that relate to functional and technical user requirements on tracking and tracing systems. It provides a brief overview of some aspects relating to the usage of IT systems in freight transport. Functional requirements and user requirements are discussed. This leads to a number of technical and system requirements, including security requirements, which are described in detail.
The latter provides a specification of those services, which are necessary for open, seamless, 'real-time' end-to-end tracking and tracing at transport unit level across transport modes. It also specifies how to integrate these services into the carriers' existing IT systems.
Moreover, it presents a high level model of collaboration between the information systems of the transport chain parties and refines the user requirements for a Tracing and Tracking system up to a level suitable for implementation. System components are introduced and their interfaces are defined.
The requirements analysis addresses the technical and user requirements that have to be considered, and the interaction between technical and socio-economic factors.
The initial requirements were collected from the consortium partners as well as the Operator Task Force - which brought together a wider array of organizations interested in ParcelCall outcomes ranging from The Post Office, IATA, and KLM cargo to software suppliers in transport and logistics. An initial set of user requirements were agreed. These included operational aspects of ParcelCall (eg scanning performance for radio tags and response times for messages) and strategic questions (the need to align with emerging industry standards and minimise adoption costs to encourage wider uptake and associated falling costs).
The initial requirement specification informed the technical specifications adopted for ParcelCall and the range of 'use-cases' that were developed as a guide to the design of the system that was subsequently tested and evaluated in the field trial.
As a result of the field trial and other insights gained in the course of ParcelCall (the assessment of markets and competing technologies and trends) a wider appreciation was achieved of the scope for tracking and tracing technologies in transport, logistics and other operations. This identified important technical and market opportunities for RFID (ranging from theft reduction/security to product life-cycle control), and the probable adoption of the generic ParcelCall technologies over the coming 5 - 15 years. It also highlighted gaps between the specific configuration tested in the ParcelCall field trial and likely final uptake patterns (viz that although item level tracking, real time tracking and condition monitoring each have adoption niches they are usually not required in tandem).
The project has yielded substantive knowledge about the socio-economic context of transport and logistics and its implications for the design and uptake of tracking and tracing technologies.
It has also produced important understanding of the processes whereby Socio-Economic Research can contribute to Research and Technological Development (RTD) in Information Society Technologies that is of more general relevance.
This highlights:
- The internal heterogeneity of RTD consortia and the mechanisms (common or complementary knowledge bases and cultures) that may facilitate communication between related disciplines;
- Differences in conceptual framework, terminology and culture between disciplines, and particularly between natural and social sciences that may impede communication across disciplines;
- Methods that may be adopted to facilitate interdisciplinary communication.
Implications:
These findings have fed into an EC Accompanying Measure 'Interdisciplinary Integration in FP5', which has discussed the implications for researchers and research policymakers.
Careful attention to internal communication and intense interaction are needed. It is helpful to conduct these early in projects. However, given the difficulties in identifying in advance the interactions between technical and social dimensions and perspectives, important insights always emerge in practice, in the course of the RTD project. Project design must be open to utilise these insights.
A number of issues were identified in the trial as being important regarding technical development and implementation.
GSM's circuit switched data (CSD) suffers from long duration of channel setup, low stability of the service, and experienced problems with different network configurations while roaming.
Attempts to deploy the Short Message Service (SMS) instead yielded slow data transfer (~ 28 sec) and a very unreliable service (no service guarantees). It also suffered from the fact that only small data packets can be transmitted, and from high costs. It many be concluded that both services do not meet the requirements imposed by track & trace applications.
On the other hand, GPRS worked satisfactory (within the limits imposed by the lack of roaming agreements between operators). That is, GPRS and in the future, UMTS, are certainly the technologies to be used in a ParcelCall type system.
The ParcelCall demonstration also points out the important need for general middleware technologies that will enable the interface between mobile wireless and fixed communications world less of scanning.
The trials showed that the use of active tags enables continual monitoring of items when in the container and in the hub, rather than registering the moment that a tag is scanned (as is the case with barcodes or passive RFID). Active tags are certainly the roads to go for transport and logistics applications.
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