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Underwriters Laboratories Works With Japan, U.S. to Test Technology for Safer Shipping of Ocean Cargo

TOKYO; 31 Aug. 2007 -- Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a global leader in product safety testing and certification, announced today an agreement to provide technical support for a critical study of the Marine Asset Tag Tracking System (MATTS), designed to strengthen security for the millions of tonnes of ocean-going cargo shipped to American ports annually.

Due to the high volume of marine cargo shipped via Pacific waterways, the Japan-U.S. route was selected for Phase II system integration testing in which containers are instrumented and tracked during loading, trans-pacific crossing, and unloading. UL is working with the Japan Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation (MLIT) and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to evaluate the communications capability of MATTS on 100 containers. Shipments originated in Japan on 28 April 2007 for the coast of California and are expected to reach their final inland U.S. destinations this month.

MATTS is one of several projects funded by the DHS Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA), which launched the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program in December 2003. HSARPA administers SBIR for the DHS Science and Technology Directorate and the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office. SBIR's goal is to increase participation of innovative small businesses in federal research and development programs and challenge industry to bring innovative homeland security solutions to reality.

"Japan is a major trading partner and second largest source of U.S. waterborne containerized cargo, and UL Japan is proud to participate in this joint national security initiative," said Chris Hasbrook, Vice President and General Manager, Global Fire, Security & Signaling Sector. "MATTS is one of several important public safety projects UL is engaged in with the Department of Homeland Security, including the U.S.-Japan Framework Initiative for a Safe and Secure Society, and supporting such initiatives is a key component of our Global Public Safety Mission."

UL Japan provided electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) testing services to determine the functionality of MATTS under different environmental conditions on each container's 10,000-kilometer sea and land journey. After successful pre-testing, cargo containers departed the Port of Yokohama for San Pedro Bay (site of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach), where they will be transported by rail and/or truck to facilities in the Midwestern U.S. for MATTS component extraction and final evaluation.

MATTS Technical Overview

The worldwide ocean going freight transportation infrastructure, known as the Marine Transportation System (MTS) is a cornerstone of the global economy. Approximately 90 percent of all cargo moves via the MTS. However, the open movement of containerized cargo presents a conflict between maintaining both security and efficiency in the MTS, neither of which can be sacrificed. Therefore, security monitoring and tracking technologies coupled with a centralized command and control infrastructure must be developed and deployed at the container level to secure the global supply chain and at the same time provide for greater supply chain management efficiency.

Information on the security, condition and location of cargo will provide the intermodal shipping industry with the tools to combat terrorism, reduce theft, provide an audit trail, monitor the security of its insured assets, and empower the intelligence functions that warn of potential threats. When fully operational, MATTS will include shipboard satellite gateways, container tags, and a secure Internet data center. The container tag is a miniature sensor, data logging computer, radio transceiver, and inertial assisted GPS tracking system integrated into a compact, inexpensive package. A tag's inertial estimator is designed to accurately resolve container location even when sporadic or multi-path reflections corrupt GPS signals.

The principal benefit of an inertial corrected GPS is that an instrumented port or ship is not required to record container location. A container tag can store its location history with no supporting infrastructure. The container location and its history are reported when the tag is in range, at distance of up to two kilometers, of an Internet gateway equipped ship or dock. To implement the reporting network, self contained, low cost satellite gateways are installed on each container ship. Ports are also equipped with low cost Internet linked gateways to provide real-time container tracking for inventory management.

Marine Cargo Statistics

According to the World Shipping Council, more than 800 ocean-going liner vessels, mostly containerships, make more than 22,000 U.S. port calls annually, or about 60 vessel calls per day. More than 50,000 container loads of imports and exports are handled at U.S. ports daily, providing direct connections to American road and rail networks, after which it may be divided into smaller loads for delivery to manufacturers, distributors, retailers or consumers.

The vast majority of liner services cargo is carried in metal containers, which are sealed at origin and remain intact while transported by ship, truck or rail car until unloaded at final destination. Containers serve as a packing-crate and in-transit warehouse for virtually every type of general cargo moving in international commerce. The standard volume measure for containerized cargo is a TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit), although most are forty-foot units, equal to two TEU.

Although international containerized cargo moves through 116 ports in the U.S., 85 percent of that trade flows through 10 U.S. ports. On the West Coast these are: Los Angeles; Oakland, CA;, Long Beach, CA; Seattle and Tacoma, Wash. Major East and Gulf Coast ports are New York; Charleston, S.C.; Savannah, Ga; Norfolk, Va; and Houston.

Almost 85 percent of America's containerized cargo trade is conducted with just 25 nations (23,176,000 out of a total 27,473,000 TEU). Of all U.S. waterborne nondomestic containerized cargo shipped in 2006, Japan (1,651,000 TEU) was ranked second only to China (10,275,000 TEU), followed by Taiwan (1,072,000 TEU), Hong Kong (1,071,000 TEU), and South Korea (1,049,000 TEU). Source: USDOT/Maritime Administration.

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