Improving the Reliability and Security of Global Cold Chain Logistics
Stage Name
Manufacturing
Handler Types
Enabling IoT Technologies
Additive manufacturer Digitial twins
Discrete manufacturer Heavy edge compute
Machine vision
Collecting
International ports
Regional Hubs
Land trucking LTE-M, 5G gateways
Railway Medium edge compute
Airplanes Satellite connectivity
Ocean freighters Heavy edge storage
Warehousing Autonomous vehicles
Track and trace
Freight
City Hubs
Land trucking LTE-M, 5G gateways
Railway Medium edge compute
Warehousing Autonomous vehicles
Track and trace
Local Delivery
Small trucks
LTE devices
Cars
Figure 1: Stages of a Global Cold Chain
Evidence of Control
Blockchain and other distributed-ledger
technologies have shown great promise in
recent years to provide a distributed,
immutable log shared by all parties
participating in a cold chain logistics system. 5
Additionally, there needs to be a trust that
participants acting within the system are
properly authenticated and authorized. The
Industrial Internet Consortium’s “Industrial
Internet Security Framework” 6 provides
While sensors and IoT devices simplify the
collection and logging of environmental
parameters during the cold chain, there are
still major concerns regarding evidence of
control by a given party within the cold
chain. Log files need to be immutable and
unforgeable to be regarded as true evidence
of control.
5
Plaga, S., Wiedermann, N., Anton, S., Tatschner, S., Schotten, H. and Newe, T. (2019). Securing future decentralised industrial
IoT infrastructures: Challenges and free open source solutions. Future Generation Computer Systems, 93, pp.596-608.
6
Industrial Internet Consortium. (2016). Industrial Internet of Things Volume G4: Security Framework. [online] Available at:
https://www.iiconsortium.org/pdf/IIC_PUB_G4_V1.00_PB-3.pdf [Accessed 9 Jan. 2019].
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