Creating the Internet of Logistics
integration. Ontologies also have the benefit
that they can organically grow. The
standardization effort does not need to be a
massive monolithic task—the adoption and
use cases can grow, just like the internet.
federation of vendor agnostic platforms to
integrate with each other, removing the
need for point-to-point integrations.
But how can we trust it?
Securing a distributed and federated global
network of logistics platforms is not an easy
task, yet it is critical for the success. To gain
the trust of participants in the Internet of
Logistics, there needs to be a holistic
approach using technologies that the
participants are familiar with and already
trust.
Third, we can represent the hierarchy of
packages within packages. The linked data 6
concept is synonymous with RDF and the
semantic web. We can link our package to a
pallet, link the pallet to a container and link
the container with the truck. This enables
traceability and the ability to share context.
IoT data from a container can be shared with
the packages inside.
Fortunately, with the rapid expansion of
global platforms, this technology is maturing
and becoming more widely known and
accepted.
Publish and let your business partners
subscribe
While demand data from a REST endpoint is
valuable, there is also a need to solve the
real time requirement so that business
processes can be automated.
Authenticated identities are the foundation
of any security model. In order to conduct
business, a company needs to know who
they deal with and trust that they are who
they are perceived to be. Combining
technologies such as OpenID connect,
mutual TLS and sender bound tokens (the
first two of which are widely used today) can
go a long way in addressing this concern.
However, how can one trust that a token or
an SSL certificate is provided by a trusted
party? To address this final concern,
companies should use existing organizations
that provide this trust mechanism.
Associations such as IATA provide this role in
the air industry, and using these types of
organizations to provide certificates and
tokens is a logical step in establishing trust
between parties. Not all companies in the
supply chain may register with IATA,
With data published on a URL, the natural
solution is to allow authorized partners to
subscribe to the data. Companies within the
Internet of Logistics are identified
themselves by URLs. Using these URLs, we
can provide authorization and access
subscription
information.
Subscribed
companies provide call-back URLs, and data
can be pushed to these endpoints. This data
can be the logistics object, event data or
simply notifications.
Using a publish and subscribe model, with
companies identified by URLs and the
logistics objects and events described in RDF,
we have created a standard that enables a
6
Linked Data - https://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/data
IIC Journal of Innovation
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