UN/CEFACT has been working on Reference Data Models (RDMs) for International Supply Chains and Multi-Modal Transport. These two RDMs share a same base of components from the UN Core Component Library (UN CCL). These are interlinked but used differently due to the differences in context between the international sales and transport contracts.
In the concept of RDM, as outlined by the UN/CEFACT White Paper on RDM approved in April 2017, these are complete and focused subsets specific to the needs of a particular domain. The context messages are then subsets of the RDMs. The current project would create an intermediate subset of the UN CCL showing the shared aspects across the international supply chain and transport-logistics chains. For maintenance purposes, if the current two RDMs are developed separately, any changes in one will require changes to the other. A higher level RDM could cover Buy Ship and Pay thereby facilitating their use and maintenanceThe 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.
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