Ports & airports: beware of the Internet of dumb Things

Have you noticed your Fitbit lighting up in the middle of the night apparently for no reason? Is your phone showing record of data transfers seemingly without purpose?

I am not trying to spook you. I am merely pointing out that as we let various personal electronic devices to track our daily habits, we are becoming less and less aware of intrusive aspects of data gathering and remote integration touching digital devices we carry around. You might assume that applications driving those devices can communicate, but only with your explicit permission. Yet how many applications wouldn’t ask you for any permissions and simply did something? And if they didn't, would you even discover what is going on?

This is an important issue to people working in environments where the devices could be used to control other devices to make the work easier or more efficient. That brings me to the topic of Internet of Things (IoT) and their role in transportation infrastructure.

At the recent conference dedicated to port technologies, there were plenty of speakers talking about equipment capable of being controlled remotely aided by an array of devices sensing just about every aspect of the machinery’s performance and the environment around the machine. From quay cranes through ground vehicles to gantries, you could easily see that most of the transport infrastructure is ready for the next step: enabling working environments in transportation with IoT.

Before being carried away, it is important to understand that having transportation machinery equipped with controllers and sensors and reporting its status to some central database, located on premises or in the cloud, is not IoT. This is an environment of connected machines. Their sensors could be used to schedule emergency maintenance or improve scheduling of preventative maintenance. Their GPS beacons tell control tower where they are at any given moment. Very effective, yet very primitive, no matter what the equipment vendors say. Don’t be misled by someone telling you that displaying the status of a control device on your phone or tablet and allowing you to issue remote command to the device to perform some action is IoT. The simple truth is that it is not your tablet processing external information and deciding on its own how to make the remote controller act, it is you. And even though you are connected to the internet, you are not a “thing”.

Then how does IoT look like? Using transportation as an example, the simplest application of IoT in transportation yards, ports, airports, etc. is using vehicle movement controllers to tell other controllers in other vehicles around it what is about to happen and agree how each vehicle will move to ensure there is no collision. Just like the aircraft anti-collision systems do for two airplanes on the collision course in the air talk to each other and agree that both airplanes will execute opposite maneuvers: one will steer down and the other will steer up. If the pilot is in control, he simply has to follow automated command. Replace the pilot with autopilot and let the machines to complete the sensing, decision making, and actions without human involved. Bring the same principle to the ground, and you can build the world of interconnected rail and road vehicles, where the devices controlling those vehicles talk to each other at the distance, collaboratively agree on the situation, and steer safely around each other or stop the vehicle dead to prevent collision, if avoidance maneuver is not possible.

Make it more sophisticated, and a quay crane lifting the containers calls up additional prime movers from the pool to match the increased lift rate or reorders the sequence of orders passed on to an AVG. No human dispatcher is required. The crane simply watches its lift rate, calculates need for ideal number of prime movers to serve itself, watches the lanes below for movements of the equipment, and correctly calculates that more ground equipment is needed, then calls for it directly to the vehicles. Again, no human intervention or dispatching. Now apply this to the airport, where upon stopping at the gate, the plane and the jet bridge (gangway) agree on the alignment of the doors, execute the physical attachment and release the plane doors to open. Not a minute wasted for a human bridge operator to manually line up the bridge to the doors and knock on the plane’s door to be opened. Great story.

What I missed at the said port technology conference, were equipment vendors falling over each other in stressing how secure their equipment controllers are and how they went about protecting their equipment from being taken over and be used as a master drone to command other interconnected controllers of other equipment operating in the yard. I am?not talking about hacking into the network, but merely into just one controlling device connected to the network of other devices, from which the malice can be spread over the secure network. Remember the case of a hacker taking control of a moving car, with driver inside, and directing car’s computer to perform actions like switching the engine on/off, turning the lights on/off, etc. On the road amongst other vehicles communicating with each other, driverless or manned, imagine the hacker telling multiple vehicles to execute a head-on crash. Results of a similar mayhem at the airport or busy port could be catastrophic.

No equipment vendor mentioned anything about blockchain technology to enable IoT devices interconnecting in a reliable way while avoiding threats such as device spoofing and impersonation. Blockchain would ensure every IoT being registered on the blockchain being able to identify and authenticate each other without the need for centralized controls and certifications required in traditional broker-based networking approach to authentication.

Why are the equipment vendors silent? Because at this moment, they don’t consider the whole “network”. Their equipment is configured to respond only to the “owner” of the machine. Communication between the equipment controls and the “control tower” forms a closed intranet of things capable of responding to the control tower, but unable to communicate externally, over the internet, with other equipment, even if operated by the same owner. A solution to this would be to buy all automated equipment from the same vendor and use their proprietary data communications protocol, but that is simply unachievable.

So, interoperability between equipment from different vendors must happen, and that means opening equipment controls to the Internet. Thus, to ensure safety and security of the operations, every new equipment added to the network must ensure that no control device on board of their equipment is unsecured from rogue access. Equipment vendors selling machinery with only the most rudimentary protection from hacking, can expose themselves to lawsuits and risk of significant payouts for damages.

The IoT is no longer a marketing hype. It promises to transform the world of transportation and logistics in ways unseen before. Sophisticated use of IoT could dramatically reduce delays, failures and improve productivity and gate throughput. Successful implementation of Iot requires equipment manufacturers to come together and collaborate not only in the area of data and command interfaces, but also security compliance and enforcement. As the cost of enabling equipment with intelligence decreases, the rewards in form of lowered operating costs can materialize quickly and have substantial positive effect on the balance sheets of the operating companies.

If you found this topic interesting, leave your comment or suggestion. I will be happy to listen and respond, if needed.

On a broader note, I work on innovative applications of mathematical optimization to solve real life business planning & execution problems.?All my writings draw on real life business experiences with my clients. Asian examples often feature big, because I live and work in this region and I see its dynamics first hand. If that interests you, please follow me to receive the latest updates.