As Hong Kong is located in the centre of Asia and can offer ground shipping to China, transshipment cargo movements have been contributed significantly to the port cargo growth of Hong Kong in recent years. During transshipment, it is important to ensure that the containers are sealed in the supervision of customs and not tampered with. A container being locked with a GPS equipped e-lock can be tracked and assumed secured between the origin of transportation and the destination. Although international standards for e-lock, such as ISO 18185, have been defined, the much needed functionalities for real-time tracking and monitoring are missing from these standards. Nowadays, vendors are offering proprietary e-lock systems to satisfy the needs of their customers. Different types of e-locks and readers are available in the market but they are not compatible with each other. Specialized readers and tracking platforms are required from the respective vendors. To tackle the problem and facilitate a secured, streamlined and efficient transshipment process for the logistics industry in Hong Kong, LSCM R&D Centre proposes an R&D project, extending the technologies developed by the centre's previous projects, to enable all the stakeholders in the logistics industry to monitor the container movement effectively in the land transport through Hong Kong. In the light of the reduced risk for containers being tampered, the inspection rate by the customs at the land boundary checkpoints can be minimized for the cross boundary logistics transportation. Right now, the technology is being piloted in the Intermodal Transshipment Facilitation Scheme, ITFS, of the Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department enabling enhanced operational efficiency for the cross boundary trucking transportation.
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