Transportation Security SensorNet: a service‐oriented architecture for cargo monitoring
| Published date | 15 November 2011 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13287261111183979 |
| Pages | 369-388 |
| Date | 15 November 2011 |
| Author | Martin Kuehnhausen,Victor S. Frost |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Transportation Security
SensorNet: a service-oriented
architecture for cargo monitoring
Martin Kuehnhausen and Victor S. Frost
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA
Abstract
Purpose – Security and accountability within the transportation industry are vital because cargo
theft could amount to as much as $60 billion per year. Since goods are often handled by many different
parties, it must be possible to tightly monitor the location of cargo and handovers. Tracking trade is
difficult to manage in different formats and legacy applications Web services and open standards
overcome these problems with uniform interfaces and common data formats. This allows consistent
reporting, monitoring and analysis at each step. The purpose of this paper is to examine
Transportation Security SensorNet (TSSN), the goal being to promote the use of open standards and
specifications in combination with web services to provide cargo monitoring capabilities.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper describes a system architecture for the TSSN
targeted for cargo monitoring. The paper discusses cargo security and reviews related literature and
approaches. The paper then describes the proposed solution of developing a service-oriented
architecture (SOA) for cargo monitoring and its individual components.
Findings – Web services in a mobile sensor network environment have been seen as slow and
producing significant overhead. The authors demonstrate that with proper architecture and design the
performance requirements of the targeted scenario can be satisfied with web services; the TSSN then
allows sensor networks to be utilized in a standardized and open way through web services.
Originality/value – The integration of SOA, open geospatial consortium (OGC) specifications and
sensor networks is complex and difficult. As described in related works, most systems and research
focus either on the combination of SOA and OGC specifications or on OGC standards and sensor
networks. The TSSN shows that all three can be combined and that this combination provides
cargo security and monitoring capabilities to the transportation and other industries that have not
existed before.
Keywords Telemetry, Freightforwarding, Security, Tracking,System monitoring,
Intermittentlyconnected wireless networks,Communication system software,Data communication,
Software engineering
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The theft and tampering of cargo are common problems in the transportation industry.
According to Wolfe (2004), the “FBI estimates cargo theft in the USA to be $18 billion”
and the Department of Transportation, “estimated that the annual cargo loss in the
USA might be $20-$60 billion”. Wolfe (2004) also gives good reason to believe that the
actual number may be even higher than $100 billion because of two reasons. First,
it is assumed that about 60 percent of all thefts go unreported and second, the indirect
costs associated with a loss are said to be three to five times the direct costs. With the
advances in technology, this problem has evolved into a cat-and-mouse game where
thieves constantly try to outsmart the newest cutting edge security systems.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1328-7265.htm
TSSN for cargo
monitoring
369
Received 24 December 2010
Revised 16 March 2011
Accepted 14 May 2011
Journal of Systems and Information
Technology
Vol. 13 No. 4, 2011
pp. 369-388
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1328-7265
DOI 10.1108/13287261111183979
In terms of securing cargo, there are usually two aspects: first ensuring the physical
safety of the cargo and second monitoring and tracking it. There has been increasing
interest in the latter because many shipments cross national borders and cargo may be
handled by a multitude of carriers. All of this leads to a demand for tracking and monitoring
systems by the cargo owners, carriers, insurance companies, customs, and many others.
This paper is part of a series that describe the design, various components and
conducted experiments of the Transportation Security SensorNet (TSSN). An extended
version can be found in a thesis by Kuehnhausen (2009). In this paper, we focus on the
software architecture and refer to papers that deal with the other parts of the TSSN;
specifically, Fokum et al. (2010) give an overview of the hardware utilized and describes
in detail truck trials and a short haul train trial. Kuehnhausen and Frost (2010a) present
a new and flexible approach to deal with challenges such as intermittent and
low-bandwidth communication in mobile monitoring environments and a long haul
train trial in Mexico. Furthermore, Kuehnhausen and Frost (2010b) discuss a framework
for analyzing and visualizing simple object access protocol (SOAP) messages to
overcome the challenges of complexity and disparity that web service monitoring and
management approaches face. Security associated with the TSSN and specifically
issues that arose when integrating elements from the web services architecture (WSA)
led by the world wide web consortium, specifically publish/subscribe communication
and service security are described in Komp et al. (2010).
Here, an architecture is introduced which builds on open standards and software
components to allow “monitoring cargo in motion along trusted corridors”. The focus
lies on the use of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and geographical information
system (GIS) specifications such as from the open geospatial consortium (OGC) in order
to allow an industry wide adoption of this open framework.
In the following we discuss the problems of proprietary systems, the advantages of
open standards and the approach of using a SOA in the transportation industry. We
introduce the design and architecture and explain the individual components as well as
the software components and specifications that are used in the implementation.
The discussion of proprietary systems in contrast to open standards in the
following section provides an overview of the challenges that trade and shipping
partners face. It explains why it is important to design an open system that is based on
standards. Some of the main advantages are a decrease in cost, more efficient shipment
management, and enhanced visibility and tracking capabilities. This paper presents
the architecture of the TSSN that was implemented to show that such an open system
can be built and deployed successfully.
2. Problem area
In order to address the problem of cargo security, research on the TSSN has been
conducted. Its goal is to promote the use of open standards and specifications in
combination with web services to provide cargo monitoring capabilities. The main
question is the following:
How can a SOA, open standards and specifications be used to overcome the problems of
proprietary systems that are currently in place and provide a reusable framework that can be
implemented across the entire transportation industry?
The main aspects of this question are discussed next.
JSIT
13,4
370
To continue reading
Request your trial