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Freight Transportation Security Consortium (FTSC) Feb. 19 announced plans to establish common security-related messaging and data-encryption standards for Global Positioning Satellite location devices used to track hazardous-material-carrying rail tank cars and tank trucks.
"The companies in FTSC believe that monitoring the tractors, tank trailers and tank rail cars used to move chemicals and fuels with modern location and sensoring devices is the best way to markedly reduce the risk of hijacking, tampering and theft by terrorists," said Drew Robertson, FTSC director and president of ASI-Transmatch, in a prepared statement.
But to be effective, FTSC members believe data from those devices should be collected and analyzed by a central monitor that can simultaneously track 200,000 haz-mat assets moving throughout the nation.
The monitor should communicate rapidly and authoritatively with police, fire and other first responders across the country during any terrorist attack — a round-the-clock job too big for any single shipper or carrier, said Robertson.
"We can't build an effective centralized security tracking system if we have
dozens and dozens of operating systems that can't talk to each other," he said.
FTSC, formed in late 2001, is an alliance of companies involved in asset tracking, vehicle monitoring, emergency response, mobile resource management systems, equipment finance and insurance. The consortium aims to develop a more-comprehensive solution to terrorist threats on U.S. haz-mat shipments.