The International Maritime Organization have published in 1965 the Convention of Facilitation of International Maritime Traffic (FAL). This convention contains standards and recommended practices on formalities, documentary requirements and procedures which should be applied on arrival, stay and departure of ships and ports. Standard forms were developed for these declarations.

Over time, UN/EDIFACT messages were developed to correspond to each of these forms and integrated into the IMO FAL Compendium. This Compendium has developed the business processes associated with the flow of information relative to these forms. In recent years, IMO has approved a project to update the FAL Compendium and align it with their Single Window project. To this aim, they have developed an independent data model of the requirements from these forms which will be published in the new compendium. IMO has agreed to add annexes within the new Compendium which will provide mappings from this independent model to international standards including the UN Core Component Library, UN/EDIFACT and the UN/CEFACT Multi-Modal Transport Reference Data Model (MMT-RDM).

The current project aims to create the mappings and updated guides to satisfy the request to complete these annexes to the IMO FAL Compendium.

The project shall update the UN/EDIFACT guides to correspond to the most recent IMO FAL Compendium and their independent data model. The project will also develop equivalent CCBDA message structures derived from the MMT-RDM plus the relevant XML schemas. 

No BRS will be developed as this is covered within the IMO FAL Compendium update project. Core Components and other artefacts may be requested as a submission to satisfy the requirements of the IMO FAL Compendium and in line with the UN/CEFACT principle of ‘semantic hub.’

The project deliverables are: 
a)	Updated UN/EDIFACT guides for the FAL messages
b)	Equivalent CCBDA message structures derived from the MMT-RDM
c)	XML schema based on the CCBDA message structures

a)	Updated UN/EDIFACT guides for the FAL messages
•	Final draft ready for publication
b)	Equivalent CCBDA message structures derived from the MMT-RDM
•	Final draft ready for publication
c)	XML schema based on the CCBDA message structures
•	Final draft ready for publication

Membership is open to experts with broad knowledge in the area of maritime transport, regulatory procedures and the IMO FAL Compendium. In addition, Heads of Delegations may invite technical experts from their constituency to participate in the work. Experts are expected to contribute to the work based solely on their expertise and to comply with the UN/CEFACT Code of Conduct and Ethics and the policy on Intellectual Property Rights.

The geographical focus of the project is global.

•	IMO FAL Convention, 1965
•	IMO FAL Compendium, 2013
•	UN CCL
•	UN/CEFACT MMT-RDM
•	UN/CEFACT messages (UN/EDIFACT)

Participants in the project shall provide resources for their own participation. The existence and functioning of the project shall not require any additional resources from the UNECE secretariat. The project will be prepared in between Forums, principally using conference call facilities.