A Service-Based Infrastructure for Advanced Logistics

1. A Service-Based Infrastructure for Advanced Logistics Luciano Baresi, Daniele Braga, Marco Comuzzi, Filippo Pacifici, and Pierluigi Plebani ESEC-FSE 2nd Int. Workshop on Service-Oriented Software Engineering Dubrovnik, September 3rd 2007

2. Outline • Dangerous goods transportation • The scenario: constraints and issues • Technological solutions: state of the art • Exploiting Web services in dangerous goods transportation • The proposed solutions • Abstraction of physical devices • Service infrastructures • Usage scenarios • Concluding remarks and future work

3. The scenario: dangerous goods transportation • Dangerous goods transportation: several constraints and requirements • European Agreement Concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road (ADR) • Standardize packaging and labels • Construction, equipment, use of vehicles • Efforts for standardizing risk management practices and rescue activities • One basic issue • European countries converging from the normative point of view • Very little has been done on integration from the technological standpoint • Intra-company solutions • Industry solutions

4. Technological support in dangerous goods transportation • Dangerous goods transportation as an instance of crisis management scenarios • Medical emergencies • Terrorist attacks • ... • The role of technology • Collecting updated information during routine operations • Tracking and tracing  routes scheduling, traffic prediction,... • Support the organization of rescue activities after disruptive events • Risk management (recovery from accidents)  Improve coordination among rescue agencies

5. The Italian Scenario • EASyLog (E-Adaptive Services for Logistics): a national project • Develop innovative technological support to dangeorus goods transportation • The scenario: inter-modal transportation: road, rail, parking areas • Containers might travel (rail) unsupervised or remain (parking areas) unsupervised for long time • Need for container-dependent technologies • The state of the art in dangerous goods transportation: highly heterogeneous • Tracking and tracing of transported goods made by individual companies • Mobile phones, proprietary networking solutions • Tracking usually associated to trucks, not containers • No coordination and interoperability among companies technological platform • Lack of support for risk management

6. Dangerous goods transportation and Web services • Exploiting Web services • Web services exploited at two levels • Intra-company (fleet management) • Web Services implement the abstraction of physical devices (temperature, pressure, position) placed on the container of dangerous goods (and not on the truck) • Web services as resources that provide information on the status of the container • Inter-company • Interoperable exchange of data among companies and risk management agency • Web services for seamless integration of Enterprise Information Systems • Better coordination among companies • Joint and efficient schedule of routes • Provide updated information to customers • Better coordination with risk managers (private and public agencies, firemen, police,...) • Centralized (inter-company) monitoring systems • Timely detection of emergencies • Easier collection of information about damanged containers and detection of accidents • Generally: easier to bring advanced solutions to Small and Medium Enterprises

7. Device Abstraction: the generic approach • Three layered architecture for device abstraction • Communication only between adjacent layers • Events to upper layer • Synchrounous commands to lower layer • The application level views sensing devices as APIs GPRS, UWB Tags, Sun Spot, Zigbee,…

8. Device Abstraction in our approach Application level API Two networking protocols for sensing devices communication • GPRS: for communication while travelling • Ultra Wide Band (or Wi-Fi): in parking areas (hubs) Other networking protocol can be accommodated when a suitable abstraction is implemented

9. Service infrastructure: the implemented approach • Containers (devices) abstracted as a set of Web services • Proprietary networking solutions to communicate with devices while travelling • Risk manager WS interacts with the Company WS for gathering information on containers • The main issue: dependency on the proprietary application protocol for devices • The company must know the type of device • Parking areas must adopt the same technology installed on the container CONTAINER TRANSPORTATION COMPANY RISK MGMT AGENCY PARKING AREA

10. Service infrastructure: tracking information storage • Tracking and tracing • Periodical (asynchronous) notification of the status (position, temperature, pressure,...) by the container, stored in the company’s status DB • Data in the status DB can be read by the EIS (of different companies) • E.g., routes scheduling, data exchange with other companies • Anomalous patterns can be detected and signalled to the Risk Management Agency

11. Service infrastructure: risk management • Risk Management • An accident is signaled to the Risk Management agency • The risk manager asks for the position and status of containers (synchronous communication) • If the container is not reachable (severe damage) the most updated information from the status DB is retrieved • The Logical Container provides the logic for selecting the UWB or GPRS networking protocol • The collected information supports the organization of rescue actvities

12. Service infrastructure: a look to the future (?) • Smart containers: the abstraction to WS is implemented directly on the device • Communication with devices via HTTP, SOAP • Full interoperability: no proprietary solutions, no need for the registry of logical containers • Main issue • Computational power and cost of devices to implement the abstraction (e.g., Sun Spot, J2mE programmable devices)

13. Open issues and future work • Security issues concerning information exchange among heterogenous company (e.g., privacy of data) • Actual feasibility of the proposed approach w.r.t. current status of dangerous goods transportation industry • Technical issues (e.g., where to put antennas...) • Costs • Future work • Concluding the implementation of supporting tools • Adoption of WSDM to increase the use of standards in the service infrastructure • Integration with the ORCHESTRA platform for risk management (Integrated platform for cross-context risk management)

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