Blockchain-Based Traceability for Shipping Containers in Unimodal and Multimodal Logistics

Abstract

An unprecedented amount of goods and commodities are shipped and transported globally each day through different modes of transport. Due to its complexity, the maritime industry suffers from a lack of trust and secure ownership evidence, protracted documentation procedures, and excessive data aggregation. These shortcomings are reflected in cargo processing delays and elevated costs in the shipping process. Most of today’s systems and technologies leveraged for managing shipping containers in unimodal and multimodal logistics fall short of providing transparency, traceability, reliability, audit, security, and trust features. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based solution that allows users to trace and track their container shipments in a manner that is decentralized, transparent, auditable, secure, and trustworthy. We employ the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to overcome the limited data storage problem. We develop smart contracts and present algorithms along with their full implementation, testing, and validation details in both unimodal and multimodal logistics. We present security and cost analyses to show that the proposed solution is secure and cost-efficient. Furthermore, we compare our proposed solution with the existing solutions to show its novelty. All developed smart contract codes are made publicly available on GitHub.