Untitled - Ministerstwo Rozwoju Regionalnego

the UN, the WTO, the WCO or the EU to help. The events of 9/11, which made
it apparent that terrorism has become a serious threat to the security of democracy
and economy, proved to be the turning point in this respect. Poorly controlled
international cargo shipments create immense risk of being used in terrorist
attacks. It should be emphasized that in the case of 9/11, as well as the
tragic events in Madrid or London, public transport means and infrastructure
were used to carry out the attacks.
Until now, the attacks have been directed mostly against human targets and
this is probably the reason behind the use of passenger transport infrastructure.
However, in attacks against structures and other facilities, terrorists may attempt
to make use of cargo carrying infrastructure, such as road vehicles and containers.
The awareness of the scale of the terrorist threat has led to greater interest
in increasing the global security of transport. The Transatlantic Security Initiative
is the fruit of cooperation between Europe and North America in the area of
exchanging knowledge, experience and technologies to protect the most vital,
sensitive and vulnerable elements of the supply chain. Its goal is to substantially
speed up the development and widespread implementation of a comprehensive
system which would considerably increase – at the very least – the security of
NATO and EU countries, especially in transport. Reaching this goal is not possible
without the use of telematics and IT solutions.
The application of even relatively simple systems of monitoring cargo with
GPS transmitters and receivers may cause significant safety and security improvement.
Currently employed and increasingly popular solutions allow for
the installation of a GPS receiver, which in conjunction with a door opening sensor,
cargo space air pressure sensor or probes measuring the state of a liquid
both in terms of pressure and position, permits the monitoring of the object involved.
The values of the monitored parameters may be periodically sent to
a control centre at any interval, depending on selected time period, as well as
automatically forwarded when certain threshold values are exceeded or at the
request of the centre.
At this point it should be emphasized that practically all telematics devices
need a source of power. This problem is relatively simple to resolve in a vehicle
connected cargo space, but in the case of multimodal and especially intermodal
transport the cargo security for containers in storage lots, depots, warehouses,
ships or railway cars becomes more complicated to solve.
8.4. Influence of telematics on transport productivity
One of the fundamental advantages of road transport, aside from the fast,
“door- to-door” movement of goods, is the “just in time” completion of deliver-
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