The design of an open, secure and scalable blockchain-based architecture to exchange trade documents in trade lanes

Customs authorities are responsible for secure cross-border activities and collection of duties. To that extent, customs authorities perform risk assessment. The customs declaration on which risk assessment is based often lacks detailed data or is incorrect. Therefore, customs authorities are in need of new ways to improve risk assessment. One way to improve risk assessment is exchange of other trade documents (e.g., Bill of Lading or pro forma invoice) the customs declaration is based on. The documents can be used for piggybacking that involves the cross-validation of documents to determine correctness of the declaration. Blockchain technology can in potential support exchange of trade documents. However, challenges related to openness, security and scalability need to be addressed to come up with effective solutions. Therefore, this research develops an open, secure and scalable blockchain-based architecture that supports exchange of trade documents. Using a Design Science Research approach, several use cases to exchange documents are developed, requirements based on previous research on the exchange of trade documents (e.g., data pipeline concept) are derived, core blockchain architecture components are derived and a design that support the use cases is developed. The research finds that a open, secure and scalable blockchain-based architecture can support exchange of trade documents. However, slight differences in the design of each use case show that blockchain technology is not a black box. Generalization is therefore not straightforward. In-depth analysis of use cases is needed to come up with effective solutions. Future research should focus on the development of a Proof-of-Concept of the blockchain-based architecture design to test whether actual exchange of trade documents is supported.Complex Systems Engineering and Management (CoSEM

The use of a blockchain-based smart import declaration to reduce the need for manual cross-validation by customs authorities

For determining the correctness of an import declaration lodged by a declarant within international shipping, customs authorities rely on manual cross-validation of the declaration with other trade documents. However, the sheer volume of import declarations lodged annually makes it impossible to manually cross-validate each declaration. Smart contracts have the potential to automatically aggregate relevant information from blockchain-based ledgers for lodging and cross-validation. In this paper we explore how such smart contract could be implemented. We demonstrate that a smart import declaration can be used to automatically aggregate information from different sources (e.g., pro forma invoice data elements stored on the blockchain ledger). However, technical and organizational considerations that are inherent to blockchain technology need to be addressed for the smart import declaration to be acceptable for both customs authorities and declarants. It is therefore suggested that future work focusses on data standards required to enable automatic aggregation of relevant trade information and the generation of the import declaration and governance of the smart import declaration by customs authorities to assure correctness.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Information and Communication Technolog

The use of a blockchain-based smart import declaration to reduce the need for manual cross-validation by customs authorities

For determining the correctness of an import declaration lodged by a declarant within international shipping, customs authorities rely on manual cross-validation of the declaration with other trade documents. However, the sheer volume of import declarations lodged annually makes it impossible to manually cross-validate each declaration. Smart contracts have the potential to automatically aggregate relevant information from blockchain-based ledgers for lodging and cross-validation. In this paper we explore how such smart contract could be implemented. We demonstrate that a smart import declaration can be used to automatically aggregate information from different sources (e.g., pro forma invoice data elements stored on the blockchain ledger). However, technical and organizational considerations that are inherent to blockchain technology need to be addressed for the smart import declaration to be acceptable for both customs authorities and declarants. It is therefore suggested that future work focusses on data standards required to enable automatic aggregation of relevant trade information and the generation of the import declaration and governance of the smart import declaration by customs authorities to assure correctness.</p

MOOD: Massive Open Online Deliberation Platform-A Practical Application

Nowadays, public debates often take place on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter and can be characterized as asynchronous, protracted and ill-structured. The Massive Open Online Deliberation (MOOD) platform aims to structure these debates. Essential is that the platform can differentiate between the moral acceptability and the social acceptance of a debate outcome. We briefly describe the e-deliberation process and look at two existing debate platforms, Liquidfeedback and Debatehub. We design and build a prototype that mainly focuses on:(1) a method to differentiate and validate facts and opinions, and (2) a mechanism that maps both the social acceptance and the moral acceptability of debate outcomes. We research these ethical concepts more in depth and implement several techniques, such as a voting mechanism, in a working prototype that supports a four stage deliberation process. In future applications, machine learning techniques can be integrated in the platform to perform sentiment analysis on a debate.Information and Communication TechnologyValues Technology and Innovatio

joerivandervelde/molgenis: MOLGENIS v1.21.2G1

Tiny change to match the latest GAVIN release (1.0.1)