Creating the Internet of Logistics
that information can be retrieved by any
authorized partner in the chain. individual item, or 2) a digital document such
as an Airway Bill, Bill-of-Lading, etc..
In the Internet of Logistics, all logistics
objects are represented by a URL (i.e.,
https://domain/entity/identifier)
where
logistics objects are either 1) a digital twin of
a physical object such as a vehicle, container,
pallet, transport unit, product package or The URL is also a Representational State
Transfer
(REST)
endpoint,
allowing
authorized partners to not only retrieve
information but also to update event
information that occurs during the lifecycle
of a logistics object.
Figure 6: Example of a Unique Identifier
learning and AI use cases drive the need for
machine readable and learnable data.
Resource Description Framework (RDF) 5 is
the foundation of the Semantic Web and
provides a basic model to help solve a few of
the challenges in logistics.
It’s all about semantics
With logistics objects now having a natural
identifier that can roam the globe, there is a
need to describe those objects. This calls for
a flexible standard that will enable different
industries and regions to define their data
models.
First, there is a flexible data model that we
can use to model any type of logistics object.
The Semantic Web has been a vision of Sir
Tim Berners Lee since 1999. Technologies
that have been developed since then have
been slowly gathering traction as machine
5
Second, we use RDFS and OWL to define
ontologies per industry and region, and we
can connect these ontologies to enable
RDF - https://www.w3.org/RDF/
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March 2020