The non-profit organization established to boost digitalisation of container shipping technology, Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA), released standards for the exchange of operational vessel schedules (OVS).
Specifically, the new standards goal to enable automatic sharing of vessel schedule data between carriers and operational service providers.
With the new standards in place, carriers can digitally publish their schedules, and their partners and operational service providers can subscribe to the carrier’s feed to automatically receive updates, or retrieve updates as needed.
…DCSA said.
What is more, the group considers that the new standards will offer complete vessel schedule transparency, increase efficiency and enable better planning and optimization within operations.
The DCSA OVS standard publication comprises a set of documents:
- the DCSA Industry Blueprint 2.0 with OVS schedule definitions and an updated glossary of terms
- the DCSA Information Model 2.0
- DCSA Data Interface Standards for OVS 1.0 and associated Reading Guides
Following the above, DCSA also released OVS API definitions on the SwaggerHub open source API development platform, where future enhancements will also be published. Carriers can use the definitions to rapidly implement DCSA standard-compliant APIs for OVS.
Operational vessel schedules are core to the functioning of the container shipping industry. Digitising them is necessary if we want build a higher degree of effectiveness and efficiency into the fabric of container shipping processes, and this release is an important step in that direction.
…Thomas Bagge, CEO of DCSA concluded.
