The value of external data integration on Validaide

We recently enhanced Validaide with the visualization of ocean freight trajectories, enabled through an API integration with SeaRoutes, a specialized provider of ocean transport data.

This latest data integration illustrates an important benefit of digital Lane Assessments:

With Validaide you automatically have access to relevant information about your transport routes, without any time required to collect this information.

We combine the special handling capabilities of your logistics service providers with the following external data sources in Validaide:

Climate data: we use climate data to determine the ambient temperature exposure of your shipments, for example on the tarmac for air freight shipments. Our source for climate data is WorldClim, a scientific database with global climate data based on 30-years of global weather data.

Weather forecasts: we currently use an integration with DarkSky to provide weather forecasts and historical weather data. This can be used to support your operational activities, for example to evaluate the temperature conditions on a specific shipment in the past, or to evaluate the weather conditions for an upcoming shipment.

Flight schedules: for air freight Lane Assessments we use the FlightGlobal flight schedule database. This enables us to provide relevant information about your flights, such as aircraft type and scheduled departure and arrival time.

Flight performance: on-time flight performance provides an indication for the reliability and risk of delay of specific flight codes, which we use in our Lane Assessment algorithm to evaluate a Lane. This information is mainly available for passenger flights, which we receive from FlightStats.

World Bank Logistics Performance Index: We use data on a country level provided by the World Bank. Specifically, we use the Logistics Performance Timeliness Index, which provides an indication for the risk of delay at the destination country due to customs clearance procedures. This is used in our algorithm to evaluate the duration and complexity of a Lane, similar to the on-time flight performance.

Address details: Our integration with Google allows you to easily find address details, for example about pick-up and delivery points of your Lanes. Google also provides the geographical location, which we can use to visualize your Lanes.

Road trajectories: Last year we added the estimated duration and distance of road freight steps to your Lane Assessment, which is also based on the route navigation information provided by Google.

Ocean trajectories: With the integration with SeaRoutes we now also provide information about ocean freight and barge transport trajectories. Based on the expected trajectory, we also provide the estimated duration and distance of your ocean freight transport routes.

Can you imagine how much time would it take to collect all this information manually for the assessment of a transport route?