Standards Development

Scope

This standard specifies the system composition, data format, technical requirements and operational requirements for freight container NFC seals.

This standard applies to the design and application of freight container NFC seals.

Purpose

1. Purpose

For container seals, ISO has published ISO 17712 (Freight containers - Mechanical seals) and ISO 18185 suite standards (Freight containers - Electronic seals). To ensure safety, seals specified are non-reusable to evidence tampering or intrusion through the doors of a container during the transportation.

ISO 18185 suite standards are designed to provide long-distance, automatic-reading container electronic seal solutions at 433MHz and 2.4GHz. However, various issues exist, such as the high usage cost of electronic seals and dedicated handset, difficulties in popularizing the installation of fixed readers, and the unsolved fixed readers’ anti-collision problem of automatically reading when multiple containers exist at the same time. Because of these reasons, there were very few cases of early applications and no successful cases in the current container shipping process since the standard published more than ten years ago.

Mechanical seals, which are still widely used, are extremely easy to counterfeit and cannot carry information. As a result, the security of container transportation cannot be guarantee. Theft, baggage, smuggling and illegal immigration have occurred almost every day in countries all over the world. According to the US Department of Homeland Security, the annual loss of container cargo in the world is as high as 30-50 billion US dollars. 39 bodies discovered 23 October 2019 in a truck container in Essex southeast England once again shocked the world.

If someone replace a mechanical seal, it is very difficult to verify the authenticity of the counterfeit, to trace the truth and to hold accountability for container operators. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt new technologies to better define the transfer responsibility, to add the uniqueness of the seals and to monitor the container transportation process, so as to improve safety.

China submitted a proposal to amend ISO18185 to ISO/TC 104 in December 2017. Many countries participated in the voting. Some countries also put forward useful opinions and suggestions. The main point is that the electronic seal specified in ISO 18185 is long-distance read automatically, which cannot be achieved by NFC technology (near field communication, passive RFID, 13.56MHz). Introducing NFC manual operations is a technical retrogression. However, mechanical seals have drawbacks mentioned above, and the automatic reading of electronic seals is not practical.

In summary, NFC has the advantages that other technologies do not have, though it can't realize automatic reading from a long distance. In the case that it is difficult to revise ISO 18185, there is a necessity to develop a new standard that is different from mechanical seals and electronic seals. The new standard for freight container- NFC seals will be a useful complement to seal standards, as well as a guide for application.

2. Reasons

Over a decade, there has been a rapid growth in RFID applications and mobile Internet technologies, with RFID identification and reading devices having evolved from special-purpose devices into ordinary smartphones. Affordable high-quality NFC has given tremendous impetus to RFID applications, which has brought about a revolution in RFID from identification to connection and has enabled more physical objects to have fast access to the Internet, thus providing new possibilities for the widespread application of NFC seals for containers.

2.1 Technical-level Advancement

2.1.1 With increasing maturity and popularization of the mobile Internet technology, it is possible to quickly and easily enable interconnection between freight container seals and the system by NFC, thus realizing information identification and interaction.

2.1.2 After an NFC chip is embedded into the seal, the UID of the chip will be pre-recorded into the system platform. In the transportation process, the system will automatically check information of the seal carries, which ensures the uniqueness of the seal, and thus overcomes defect of that the mechanical seal is easily counterfeited.

2.2 Operational level Progress

2.2.1 The smartphone can realize NFC reading. Currently, smartphones are almost hold by everyone. It is predicted that by 2020, the number of global smartphone users will reach 6.1 billion. Container operators bring with their own smartphones, just download the app, and can operate on NFC seals with simple training.

2.2.2 Through NFC reading of the seal, smartphone with various functions can easily realize the basic function of the seal and expand further, including automatic acquisition of relevant information: status, operation time, position, operators, pictures and videos. Through information interaction, it allows users to evidence tampering or intrusion through the doors of a container during the transportation by verify the uniqueness of the seal. Thus, users can trace the tampered interval and the relevant time and location. Therefore, it improves the informationization level of container transport.

2.2.3 Container NFC seals are conducive to clarifying the transfer accountability during transportation. At present, both container shipping and multimodal transportation use close-range visual inspection of mechanical seals to define cargo handling accountability. NFC seals have been proved an efficient way to define accountability, to speed up handover process, to eliminate human error, and to realize electronic and paperless service.

2.3 Economical-level Improvement

2.3.1 Broad application prospects. Smartphones and cloud platforms have provided broad application prospects for NFC seals. Users can enhance the security and informatization of container transport without changing the existing container management system and instead just adding the NFC seal information and purchasing an NFC seal at the equivalent price of a mechanical seal (embedding a $0.1 NFC tag in the mechanical seal).

2.3.2 Lower costs. An NFC seal only costs $0.3, much lower than that of an electronic seal system with RFID fixed reader and handset, and is more acceptable to the user. In view of the above, with the new trend, we hold that a new NFC seal standard should be developed for container transport node tracking and safety tracing, as well as requirements of container machinery seals.

3 Applications

A standard must be tested in practice before it is widely accepted. In recent years, NFC seals have been tested and applied on the global scale.

China has conducted extensive research and practice on NFC seals. China’s Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau took the lead in the application of NFC seals: electronically sealing the containers for transporting fireworks for export and applying NFC seals to the fresh vegetables and fruits containers for transporting to save the time of open-box inspection to improve customs clearance efficiency; Port of Shanghai began the trial operation of NFC seals for dangerous goods containers. Port of Fangcheng, a sea port in western China, starts to apply NFC seals to freight containers. PetroChina, Sinopec, ENN Energy, Sinoenergy Corporation, and other companies apply NFC seals to their tank containers and tank trucks. China Grains & Logistics Corporation adopts NFC seals for its grain transport to ensure conveyance security. Shell Oil Company applies NFC seals to their chemical tank containers. Walmart starts to apply NFC seals and electronic locks to ensure security and traceability in handling China’s logistics. EMS and S-F Express in Hubei, China Railway Logistics in Anhui, Railway Logistics in Xi’an, COSCO Shipping Lines in Shanghai, and other logistics companies also try out of NFC seals and electronic locks. Almost all container logistics related enterprises in China began to implement the application of NFC seals.

China accounts for about 70% of the world's container seal production. Among them, Chnseal from Huangshan, Shanghai Xinfan Industrial Corporation, Shenyang Shining Fortune Container Seal, SealSealS from Wenzhou and other seal manufacturers have begun mass production of NFC electronic seals. According to statistics, nearly 6 million electronic seals have been sold to the United States, Europe, Canada, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates, India, Brazil and other countries, and the order volume has increased year by year. The gradual adoption of national NFC seals laid the foundation for the development of new standard.

ISO 18185 specifies an electronic seal that is automatically read by a fixed reader and handset. This proposal specifies an NFC seal that is manually read by a smartphone, which will be a strong complement of ISO 18185. The new standard will give users a new choice for the booming container shipping, multimodal transport and container logistics. It is believed that NFC seals will gain high popularity among users.

China has developed the national standard for Freight container- NFC seals and is willing to share the experience with all countries. We sincerely hope that more countries will participate in this work and spare no efforts to establish a new international standard for NFC seals.