A conceptual information sharing framework to improve supply chain security collaboration

Modern supply chains are critical in terms of efficiency, economic activities and commercial impact, particularly in case of security incidents. Inland terminals, commercial ports and dry ports constitute key gateways for the transportation flows in these modern supply chains and are require enhanced security procedures. This paper develops a framework that facilitates the sharing of information among various supply chain stakeholders, which is expected to improve the security level from a value chain perspective. In this context, we propose the upgrade of the current security strategies utilising existing processes, equipment in order to minimise time and cost currently needed but more importantly improving the level of security in the supply chain. A conceptual rule and role-based data fusion framework is developed enabling the seamless and timely exchange of messages. The proposed data fusion framework has a simple architecture that supports quick integration to either network-based, distributed systems or conventional stand-alone systems and adheres to common data fusion principles. The proposed framework considers different components (e.g., sensors, algorithms and fusing procedures) in an equipment agnostic approach so as to enable easy access and easy usage of security information.