Current Freight Data Projects
The Hub is progressing the following data projects to improve the collection, quality and publication of freight data Australia-wide.
Please contact us if you would like to become involved in a project.
1. Freight Data Catalogue
Australian freight data is fragmented. Often useful open freight data exists, but is difficult to find or analyse. The freight data catalogue project will provide a centralised entry point to a curated selection of high-value datasets, with high quality metadata, across all modes and on a national scale.
2. National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy Reporting
This project aims to improve the timeliness and coverage of the key performance indicators of the National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy by refining the Strategy's Performance Framework, identifying where there are gaps in measuring quantitative progress against the Strategy, and identifying new key performance indicators and associated data that can fill these gaps and adding them to the dashboard or other reporting.
3. Road Data
Nationally consistent information on the current state of the road network, will allow better performance monitoring and benchmarking of Australia’s road network, enabling better planning and investment decision-making and better outcomes for road users.
This project draws upon Ministerial commitments under the Heavy Vehicle Road Reform for road agencies to annually share harmonised road condition and expenditure data to a central repository. Consistent collection and reporting of data together with data on rest stops, road works and road closures and traffic counts.
4. Truck Movement Data
Many trucks across the Australian fleet automatically and accurately report their location at regular intervals to the vehicle owner. When combined and de-identified, this rich information on where trucks are travelling, where they are stopping and congestion on the roads, can assist industry understand where freight is being moved by road, and governments to form policy decisions. This project will collaborate with freight, logistics and vehicle tracking stakeholders to increase data sharing, harmonise and combine data from various sources, and discover data value for both data providers and users.
5. Customs Data
This project will establish a new source of data about what commodities are flowing in and out of Australia's ports, including inside containers, as well as the origins and destinations of freight. To support more informed planning and investment decision making, it will overcome challenges of data quality and confidentiality to share quality data to trusted government and industry decision makers.
6. Container Data
Container movements through our ports are critical to our economy and quality of life. Publishing performance data at higher frequency will assist industry and government to set targets to improve efficiency and support Australia's international competitiveness. Australia's key container data is currently published in the Waterline report which collects data bi-annually from port operators, stevedores and port authorities.
More up-to-date data will assist industry and government's understanding of the national container supply chain. This project will focus on three key areas of the container supply chain: terminals, the infrastructure and wider environment surrounding the terminals (port precinct) and the catchment area for import and export activity through the port (hinterland).
7. Rail Freight Data
This project will work with the rail industry to combine data from different sources, preserve commercial sensitivities, and publish aggregated data and data products. Enhanced data exchange will support evidenced based policy and improve industry and government’s understanding of the role rail plays in moving freight and the challenges facing the rail industry in growing the volume of freight on rail.
8. Freight Consignment Data Exchange
The project aims to promote increased information sharing between freight and logistics operators to improve supply chain resilience and performance and reduce inefficiencies and data blind spots in the system. In the future, strategic decision-making and planning processes can benefit from increased and standardised data exchange by receiving feeds of historic consignment data to understand the movement of goods across supply chains.
9. National Location Registry
For over 50,000 small businesses involved in the road freight sector the National Location Registry offers the opportunity to easily access current information on customer locations. Current access to freight industry location information is limited due to the fragmented and manual approach of collecting and distributing location data. The National Location Registry being delivered by GS1 Australia provides reliable and accurate data across the freight industry as an electronic ‘address book’ of freight delivery and pick-up locations. This data includes precise locations of loading docks as well as locations of freight sources such as mines, agriculture and construction sites. It includes opening hours, dimension limits, a point of contact, safety requirements and facilities details.
10. Domestic Sea Freight Data
This project provides a national level of domestic sea freight movements, it will investigate different methods and approaches to comparing, contrasting and reconciling various aspects of datasets so that they can be used to provide a comprehensive and accurate evidence base of domestic sea freight activity.
11. International Supply Chain Benchmarking
International Benchmarking is a key action under the National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy, and provides opportunities to compare and analyse performance for new insights to improve operations. International benchmarking assessments at sectoral and commodity levels, and the CSIRO Supply Chain Benchmarking Dashboard are now available.
The Dashboard evaluates Australia's supply chain transport and logistics performance through comprehensive data, modelling, and analysis. It leverages the Department's longstanding investment in the CSIRO's Transport Network Strategic Investment Tool (TraNSIT) to establish freight performance benchmarks and indicators for Australia's key import and export supply chains against international competitors.
12. Forecasting Freight Demand
The Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics produces long-term outlooks (forecasts) of likely future freight transport demand by transport mode (road, rail, sea and air), and at differing levels of disaggregation (for example national, state and territory, and capital cities). These forecasts help inform the long-term strategic transport outlook.
The project will work with stakeholders to confirm the most appropriate time horizons, update frequency and level of disaggregation for the various forecasts in the suite.
13. Freight Data Standards
A key barrier to improved use of data in the freight system is the inability to properly compare and aggregate data sources due to unstandardised data. This project will initially focus on understanding what freight data standards are in use across Australia, as well as evaluating and reviewing international best practice for data standardisation
Once the evaluation is complete, the project will examine potential paths forward to standardisation of data. Data standardisation reduces barriers for data exchange between freight operators, improving the visibility of freight movements and increasing the efficiency of Australia’s supply chains.