Pol-Corridor: IT systems

This report describes how generic freight architecture has been applied to international intermodal logistics process on a freight transport corridor (Pol-Corridor) between Nordic countries and the South-Eastern part of Europe. The objective has been to give approximative guidelines for the implementation of information systems, information exchange flows, and interfaces required by the overall Pol-Corridor concept. It covers the results of work package 6 in Pol-Corridor project - Design and Laboratory Implementation of Info-system for Pol-Corridor. The first task has been to define the business process of international intermodal transport on Pol-Corridor. The business process model covers transport planning and booking model as well as road, sea, and railway transport process models. Business model forms the basis for conceptual architecture, which has been used further in defining the Service Architecture for Pol-Corridor. The Service Architecture contains the information services, their relation to the process components of the conceptual architecture, and the actual systems providing the services. Commercial, available in-house or off-the-shelf IT systems that can serve the business processes are mapped to the business processes of conceptual architecture. Finally, it has been assessed what kind of organisation and financing would be the most suitable for the information services of Pol-Corridor. The option where a common information centre provides information to logistics operators and customers by collecting data from the parties along the transport chain was considered the most suitable for Pol-Corridor. Already today there are IT systems, which can provide necessary information services for Pol-Corridor. The challenge is to integrate different systems and make them inter-operable between different countries and operators. The last, and certainly not least, challenge is to find ways of co-operation between operators along Pol-Corridor.