Freight Transportation Security Consortium



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Freight Consortium Seeks to Establish Standards for Vehicle Location Messaging for Security Applications


(New York, Feb. 19, 2002) Members of the Freight Transportation Security Consortium agreed today to work together to establish common standards for security-related messaging and data encryption for the GPS location devices that track tank trucks and tank railcars used to carry hazardous materials.

Drew Robertson, director of the FTSC and president of ASI-Transmatch, summarized the objectives of the standards-setting effort. "The companies in the FTSC believe that monitoring the tractors, tank trailers and tank railcars used to move chemicals and fuels with modern location and sensoring devices is the best way to markedly reduce the risk of hijacking, tampering and theft by terrorists. However to be effective, the data from those devices should be collected and analyzed by a central monitor that can simultaneously track the 200,000 assets in the hazmat supply chain. If there is another terrorist attack, that monitor must be able to communicate rapidly and authoritatively with the police, fire and other first responders across the country. That’s a round the clock job that is too big for any single shipper or carrier," he said.

"It may be surprising but there are hundreds companies in the vehicle tracking and mobile resource management industries using many different proprietary communications protocols," Robertson noted. "However, we can’t build an effective centralized security tracking system if we have dozens and dozens of operating systems that can’t talk to each other. Our members have solved most of the design problem. GPS tracking devices for railcars and truck tractors and trailers are ready to go. Now we need a Rosetta Stone to make them work together for national security. That’s what FTSC members have agreed to work toward today," concluded Mr. Robertson.

Mark Hornung, COO of ALK Technologies, a FTSC member company, explained, "In the past, developers designed proprietary systems optimized for their unique hardware, software, communications channel and target vertical market. While it’s not realistic to ask every developer to recode their entire systems, it is possible for them to extract just the few pieces of data relating to security and make them available to a central monitor. With common definitions for security-related messages such as location, driver and load status, a central monitor can integrate the data from the many different location devices now deployed across the railcar and truck trailer fleets. We could have something very useful in just a few months."

Ray Menard of Criticom noted, "For several years, our company has been actively monitoring mobile assets using several different GPS systems. That has meant we have had to become an expert in each one. The FTSC initiative to set messaging standards will allow us to greatly expand our service so we can use many, perhaps most, of the commercially available systems in our security business. More importantly, it will mean we can dispatch fire, police and other first responders much more quickly a nd accurately. If we truly want a national emergency response capability to combat the threat of terrorism, we have to agree to work together. Criticom is glad to join with the other members of the FTSC to develop a joint response to this new threat to our national security."

The Freight Transportation Security Consortium is an alliance of leading companies in the fields of asset tracking, vehicle monitoring, emergency response, mobile resource management systems, equipment finance and insurance. The consortium was assembled in late 2001 in response to the need for a comprehensive solution to the threat of terrorist attacks on the hazardous materials supply chain. Technical members of the consortium are listed below.


Vericom Tech www.vericomtechnologies.com
Lat-Lon www.lat-lon.com
Vistar www.vistardata.com
Par Technology www.parlms.com
StarTrak www.startrak.com
PowerLoc www.powerloc.com
TACS/Comtrack www.fleetcommunications.com
Terion www.terion.com
Dynamic Mobile Data www.dmdsys.com
@Track Communications,Inc. www.at-track.com
Cloudberry www.cloudberry.com
SkyBitz www.skybitz.com
Locate www.locatenetworks.com
AirIQ www.airiq.com
Cabit www.cabit.com
Marconi www.marconi-infochain.com
Wireless Matrix www.wirelessmatrixcorp.com
Teletrac www.teletrac.net
SkyEye www.sky-eye.com
Aspen Security www.aspensecurity.com


For further information, contact Drew Robertson at 212-981-2529 x13 or email at FTSC@transmatch.com