ADVANCED INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FOR INTERNATIONAL FREIGHT MOVEMENT

An increasing volume of commercial traffic is moving across international borders. At the same time, to facilitate changes in manufacturing processes, it is increasingly important that this freight arrives at its destination at a precise time. These new requirements on international transportation networks come at a time when inspectors at ports of entry are being asked to reduce the amount of illegal narcotics entering the country, thereby slowing down freight traffic. The basic tension between public and private sector responsibilities in moving freight across international boundaries appears to be intractable on the surface. This paper will show how Sandia National Laboratories developed an approach to solving this complex and politically-charged problem. The authors began by eliciting comments from the border freight stakeholder community, including numerous interviews with players from both public and private sectors. Key requirements for these stakeholders involve understanding the border crossing process, being able to locate container cargo on demand, and being able to ensure the integrity and security of the container from origin to destination. The requirements of locating and securing the cargo focus on its passage through the critical transitions of intermodal transfer and crossing international boundaries, but are applicable throughout its journey. The authors also assessed the current and projected state-of-the-art in intermodal technologies and reviewed developments in other border technology projects. They then set out to design a system that will provide the requisite information using technology transferred from Sandia's defense applications with a particular emphasis on information security. The Advanced Technologies for International and Intermodal Ports of Entry (ATIPE) project will demonstrate how users can obtain information on how freight is processed through specific ports of entry. ATIPE will also demonstrate information retrieval for authorized users concerning the location and status of specific shipments globally. The technologies being explored in ATIPE include a secure information and communication network that permits only authorized users to access it.