How Courier Logistics can be Delivered Safely During the Pandemic?

Recently, counter-attack of pandemic emerged in many regions all over China, especially in first-tier city Shanghai where the pandemic was running in high level. Since March, people detected with positive COVID-19 infections had reached more than 100,000 cases, while virus mutation also brings bad effect to economic society, particularly development of courier logistics industry.

Image source: CCTV News

According to news, under the pandemic outbreak, outer packaging of courier logistics, especially imported goods was frequently tested positive for COVID-19 virus. This is because, as pandemic became serious in foreign countries, infected workers may go on duty, thus once protection is insufficient, virus will be adhered on the outer packaging of products during product manufacturing and packaging process.

In order to curb these problems from happening, except for strengthening custom inspection and quarantine, the most important thing is to carry out disinfection on courier logistics goods. Via the attempt to adopt new technology such as blockchain to empower courier logistics disinfection checking, transformation of pandemic prevention and control from “emergency management” to “intelligent management” can be achieved effectively.

“Worries” of Courier Logistics Industry under The Pandemic

In recent social environment, courier logistics plays an essential role in maintaining normal lifestyle and stable society of citizens. However, under regular pandemic prevention and control, “worries” still exists during the operation of courier logistics services.

Image source: network

First is low efficiency in courier logistics services. Despite that low efficiency is due to adjustment of pandemic prevention and control policies of different regions, courier logistics enterprises should be experienced and skilful in completing all-chain prevention and control of courier logistics from purchasing, transporting, storing, selling to using when facing “public health emergencies” such as pandemic prevention and control, so that supplies can be delivered orderly, accurately and in time without intermediate loss.

Second is non-transparent transportation process. Currently, as most enterprises use self-built system to track goods transportation, data in each phase cannot be monitored effectively. Furthermore, data fraud issues in certain enterprises were reported in news sometimes, and this has frequently caused consumers to have questions about the whole industry.

Third is huge difficulties in resource sharing. Currently, courier logistics phase involves many enterprises, complex delivery and dispersed goods storage locations, but because some resources unable to achieve sharing, thus this has resulted to insufficient transparency of the whole process, meanwhile tracking and tracing will also become very difficult once issues occurred.

Disinfection Data Issued on Chain to Make Prevention and Control More Secure

As early as year 2019, Hangzhou launched city brain construction and achieved full process monitoring on disinfection and cleaning of business premises such as city hotels via blockchain, IoT, AI and other technologies.

The specific method is: Use more than 10 moving 5G cameras to aim at the disinfection room and record the whole cleaning and disinfection processes of hotel staffs. Then, all screens recorded will be collected and issued on chain as data using blockchain technology via IoT data terminal and AI algorithm to judge whether the staffs have carried out proper disinfection and to prevent tampering of data. Hence, even for a pair of chopsticks, we will be able to check whether it has been disinfected or not.

Image source: network

For the same reason, during courier logistics industrial development, we can also issue disinfection data on chain rapidly to improve goods transportation efficiency and reduce pandemic prevention and control cost of the whole society in a safer way.

In specific way, we can utilize blockchain technology to establish courier logistics operational platform under different parties’ recognition, exploit and analyse information via “blockchain + big data” and “blockchain + AI”, integrate all types of information including disinfection data organically and automatically complete transportation route planning and route optimization to achieve effective collaboration of each node.

Blockchain’s characteristics are used to achieve these targets:

• First is distributed ledger.

Blockchain, decentralized distributed ledger in short, helps to achieve node-to-node communication between courier logistics parties, eliminate complex information transmission level, reduce obstacles and conflicts, and meet with pandemic requirements accurately.

For example, by relying on VoneDAO product of Vonechain Technology, blockchain information platform is constructed to carry out numerous matchings on disinfection data of vehicles, goods, locations, etc. on the basis of processing courier logistics basic data in order to achieve intelligent deployment of goods. At the same time, it helps to issue order data, GPS data, logistics data of all processes, and data such as temperature and humidity during logistics transportation process starting from shipping, transportation to receiving phases on chain as ledger after hash in order to provide credible data support for subsequent pandemic monitoring and tracing.

• Second is timestamp technology.

Timestamp is a set of data which shows a transaction completed within a specific time, and the transaction is open and tamper-proof. The reason why blockchain becomes “chain” is because timestamp connects every block that represents every performed transaction based on time sequence in order to form a set of ordered and unbreakable chain. In courier logistics phase, characteristic of timestamp is to ensure user data cannot be tampered, therefore if all disinfection data are issued on chain, time accuracy will be greatly increased and anti-pandemic cost will be saved.

• Third is smart contract technology.

Smart contract enables digitalized agreement with triggering conditions can be executed correctly according to participants’ will. Smart contract based on blockchain technology will trigger status identification judgement based on predesigned program to reduce man-made interference. For instance, during pandemic prevention and control, there are clear requirements on temperature and humidity when vaccines are transported, thus via technical design, if environmental parameters such as temperature and humidity exceed the standard, blockchain system will automatically warn against exceptional situation, and this will greatly increase security and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

Meanwhile, as each blockchain node possesses certain edge computing capabilities, after the node obtains access record and disinfection data information of courier logistics goods via index ID and hash value, smart contract can automatically complete “banned” and “release” actions so that safe operational efficiency of goods can be improved and people in high-risk area can carry out isolation and tracing based on targeted hint.

• Last is traceability.

Traceability is an important characteristic of blockchain, it also matches with safety requirements of courier logistics during the pandemic. Vonechain Technology’s VoneTracer blockchain traceability platform which has been applied maturely in sectors such as agricultural food, dietary supplements, cosmetics and so on can achieve full process traceability of courier logistics goods. Moreover, through this product, VoneTracer can trace the place where raw materials of goods were purchased, production, manufacturing and packaging locations of semi-finished products and end products, which companies and logistics are in charge of transportation and delivery, and check whether disinfection measures of each phase are achieved, all these data will be collected in real time. Meanwhile condemned supplies can also be rapidly disposed and held responsible accurately, therefore this can increase the security of each courier logistics phase effectively during the pandemic.

Currently, VoneTracer traceability platform of Vonechain Technology has gone through market testing, thus this system is very matured and stable. Moreover, as user range has further expanded, single-use cost of product which reduces rapidly has decreased early software and hardware investment of enterprises, hence VoneTracer can issue information data including disinfection data of courier logistics enterprises during the pandemic on chain for traceability in order to save large amount of operating cost for enterprises.

Conclusion

Nowadays, as we still do not manage to see the end of pandemic, regular prevention and control must be implemented. For this type of “public health emergencies”, courier logistics industry which encounters randomness of requirements, traffic imbalance and time urgency should strive to achieve fast and effective, supply and demand matching, accurate traceability, transparent information and real-time response target in order to accomplish maximization of time effectiveness and minimization of disaster loss.

Vonechain Technology will also uphold the original intention of adopting blockchain technology to solve actual problems, promote further development of courier logistics industry via technical means, and overcome industrial pain points such as low efficiency, non-transparent, no resource sharing, etc. Especially via rapid chain issuance of disinfection data which brings more technical changes to pandemic prevention and control and achieves “node-to-node” goods distribution can facilitate process transparency, provide stronger support for “public health emergencies” and make prevention and control more secure.