IATA ONE Record hackathon: real-time disruptive innovation

We just finished our second IATA ONE Record Hackathon in Madrid on 21-23 June and we were blown away by the energy and spirit of innovation. The pace at which the ONE record data sharing standard is being embraced and the possibilities that it creates were underscored by the solutions that the 7 teams put together in just 28 hours.

But let's back up a little. At the start of 2018 the air cargo industry with IATA decided to make a leap forward and agreed to develop a data sharing standard, ONE Record, that would allow any company in the logistics and transport chain to exchange data directly via a data sharing API and based on a new data model, an ontology to be precise. During the year, a group of 60 experts discussed, developed, debated, changed, improved and produced a first version of the new standard. It was more an MVP than a fully fledged spec, but it was good to implement pilot hubs around the world. At IATA's Cargo Services Conference in Singapore in March 2019, this MVP was adopted as a Recommended Practice and published on GitHub as an open standard.

This led to an increased activity around ONE Record. Six pilots where launched around the world, each one involving a handful of companies such as airlines, forwarders, CCS, IT providers, GHA and customs. In parallel, experts in air cargo data and process, continue to refine and develop the air cargo ontology in RDF and JSON-LD which is a truly exciting technology that promises to integrate the ever expanding cargo data around the world, not just for airlines but for the entire supply chain, including other modes.

Our hackathon giveaway: your own brand new sandbox!

ONE Record as a data sharing standard is built on a simple premise: implement your own ONE Record server and connect to the Internet of Logistics, i.e. all the other ONE Record servers out there. To prime the pump, we developed a basic but fully functional ONE Record server that we put on GitHub for all to clone and deploy.

And that was the first challenge: implement a few ONE Record servers and join the movement...

Winning ideas

Seven teams did just that and the results where impressive. Below is an example from the winning team "Compass" from IBS PLC, a solution that can process search requests from for missing or lost cargo and match these with found cargo at other locations, using physical package characteristics and markings.

Their working prototype used two ONE Record servers. The first is used to collect the search requests with AWB data through OCR on mobile app. The second server collects the "found cargo" data that was acquired through an app that did AI based box dimension measurements and interacts with the "search" server through a Pub/Sub mechanism.

The other teams had equally impressive solutions involving multiple ONE Record servers and if anything the jury (Jonathan Parkinson of Air Canada Cargo, Thorsten Friedrich of Lufthansa Cargo and Peter Roberts of IAG Cargo) had a tough time calling it, taking into account innovation, commercial viability, implementability, use of technology etc.

It was a crazy bet but he pulled it off.

Another winning team was IT Avia from St Petersburg in the non-corporates category developed messenger app chatbot for locating cargo through AWB numbers. They used a ONE Record server to access AWB tracking data. The app popped up a nice map in addition to the textual description of the location.

The other teams were:

Air Canada Cargo: Produced a full first & last mile solution with live apps for the customer and the uber-like driver. The services where synchronized through 3 ONE Record servers representing the agent, the airline and the service itself.

Finnair Cargo and Accelya: This team connected the passenger and the cargo booking systems to link passenger PNR with their pet (cargo) journey. Using AI to recognize the dog breed and propose an adequate crate was a cute touch. They used two ONE Record servers to link the carrier and handler's hubs.

e-CARGOWARE: Another nice live animals use case: this team used AI to analyze video streams to determine the well-being of pets in transport, recognizing and communicating with the passenger that their pets were loaded, fed, watered etc. They used ONE Record to connect freight booking and handling systems.

Descartes: This team came up with a very nice bootstrap solution: how to ensure that ONE Record freight data would be complete even if not all parties have ONE Record access. They used a ONE Record server to create a bridge between ONE Record and the Descartes messaging service.

William Feller: When you imagine hackathons, you imagine William: he was a one man team who rewrote the ONE Record (server which is based on express.js) in PHP and built a freight tracking service where parties can self register. It was a crazy bet but he pulled it off.

Fueling the future

This was our second IATA ONE Record cargo hackathon in conjunction with the 13th IATA AIR hackathon which focuses on passenger distribution technologies around the NDC standard.

Although these events are clearly powered by tech savvy innovators who compete to win on the strength of their solutions, for me as a tech veteran these events are about the community. The community of people that not only dare to innovate and introduce new and disruptive ideas, but who can't live without doing so. They invest their time, energy and budget to hang out with like minded souls to move the needle forward a few notches. For me these hackathons are a privilege and unquestionably the best days in the year.

Back in the office, we're now following up on the amazing new relationships and ideas and I have only one thought bouncing around my mind. How can we replicate this innovative and disruptive energy around us and bring digital cargo decisively into Economy 4.0.

On that thought, why don't you have a go yourself? The sandbox, API specs etc and instructions for deploying your own ONE Record server are here. Enjoy and do let us know what you're up to!