Developing an automated solution for ETA definition concerning long distance shipping

This research was built around a case study from HST Sea- & Airfreight, which is concerned with tracking their freight which travels by sea. The research question around this research was build is: “How can a real time track and trace and prediction system for deep sea vessels be developed?” Based upon this research, it is concluded that there are two methods to effectively create an automated solution for this question. HST currently tracks ships transporting their freight via various websites which list information on this subject. Data is collected from these websites and processed within their current IT system. The data collection process could be automated by using web scraping. Furthermore arrival times are often calculated by using historical data. By combining these two methods, HST could calculate the estimated time of arrival of these ships in two ways, which results in a way to estimate the reliability. An application which collects data from various websites based upon one input value has been developed and it is expected that this system could be linked to the current IT infrastructure at HST, so that these input values can be generated automatically and human interference can be minimized in the process.