Supply Chain Security: Benefits for the Socio-Economy

Maritime Intermodal door-2-door supply chains are complex as many different actors are involved. Beside legal supply chain actors also criminals use logistics transport networks for their operations. For example, illicit narcotics, weapons and counterfeited products are smuggled in these supply chains. There are already mitigation measures for maritime security in place but there is still need for improvement in order to reduce the volume of illicit transports and the social damages related to it. Customs authorities focus on these illicit activities in order to detect and to limit damage to the society. The main aim is to ensure safety and security in international trade. Therefore, customs authorities use risk targeting systems which are based on customs declaration data and intelligence systems to detect high risk trade flows. High quality data has to be used to detect these illicit trade flows. However, today the quality of data is lacking. The CASSANDRA project developed a data pipeline approach to improve the data quality by sharing data between all legal supply chain actors, including businesses and authorities. During the project a socio-economic cost benefit analysis was carried out. A matrix specially designed for the evaluation of improvement of security in maritime supply chains was developed to assess the benefit generated by the data pipeline. The implemented methodology approach for a quantitative assessment considers criteria like risk indicators (available data on which customs decide to inspect a container), kinds of damages (e.g. damages due to smuggling of narcotics or weapons) and inspection rates. For the validation of the methodology interviews with different European customs authorities were carried out. The execution of socio-economic cost benefit analysis was carried out twice: with and without the implementation of the data pipeline approach. Thus, the damage for the socio-economy, which is already prevented by customs (as-is situation), and the possible improvements through the CASSANDRA approach (to-be situation) was compared