Allison Dane Camden is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multimodal Freight Infrastructure and Policy at DOT. (Main photo by Juan Sorto/Transport Topics)
[Stay on top of transportation news: Get TTNews in your inbox.]
Nearly two years after an information-sharing forum designed to improve communication among freight stakeholders was launched, its new director expects it will continue to grow.
While promoting the Freight Logistics Optimization Works, or FLOW, forum’s potential benefits, Deputy Assistant Secretary Allison Dane Camden expressed confidence about its long-term capabilities. Established as a tool to help stakeholders respond to disruptive freight bottlenecks at commercial ports of entry, the U.S. Department of Transportation anticipates FLOW will expand over the coming years.
“We’re looking to grow FLOW in 2024,” Camden told Transport Topics during a recent interview. “That’s a data-sharing partnership with the private sector that’s really meant to enable the participating companies that are working with us to anticipate changes in the supply chain and help inform their decision-making.”
Last fall, as part of the launch of the department’s Office of Multimodal Freight Infrastructure and Policy, Camden took on the role of overseeing the FLOW forum in partnership with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The new multimodal office is assigned with helping to maintain efficiency at freight networks and commercial supply chains. FLOW is central to the office’s mission.
“It’s really a partnership with ocean carriers, ports, motor carriers, other supply chain partners to help better predict changing cargo demand before it hits our shores. So this can help us to identify and then avoid bottlenecks; create a more resilient supply chain,” Camden said Feb. 8.
“Something that we saw during the supply chain crisis was you had a lot of these individual actors throughout the international supply chain making their own decisions about, you know, what they were shipping and when and what modes they were using and what equipment they needed,” she went on. “But they were making those decisions without understanding the decisions of everybody else in that supply chain. And so this is an innovative data exchange platform.”
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, aspects of the freight industry and supply chain connectivity sector experienced various degrees of disruption. Bottlenecks at commercial ports were partly attributed to interoperability inadequacies. FLOW’s data-sharing applications originate from its volunteer members. Stakeholders are asked to evaluate FLOW’s analyses to further pursue interoperability across supply chain operations.
As she put it, “We have motor carrier FLOW members that are sharing their available trucks to move cargo. So that we can look at the data and see how many trucks are available on a given day to move containers at a member port. So collectively as this government industry partnership, it’s going to help us preview and prevent supply chain bottlenecks. That’s the goal.”
We’re proud to appoint Allison Dane Camden to head the department’s new Multimodal Freight Office. In Allison’s new role, she will lead President Biden’s efforts to strengthen our nation’s supply chains—making them more resilient for the future. https://t.co/5EpgGxdzWq
— U.S. Department of Transportation (@USDOT) December 4, 2023
Camden explained that FLOW permits the department with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics to anonymize samples of proprietary data. DOT officials then showcase anonymized information to help inform decision-making.
“I see…
This article was originally published by a www.ttnews.com . Read the Original article here. .