BS ISO 28005 — Electronic Port Clearance (EPC) for Supply Chain Security Management Series

🚢 BS ISO 28005 is a set of international standards developed by ISO for electronic port clearance (EPC) within the framework of supply chain security management systems, published in the United Kingdom by BSI. The series defines the message structures and core data elements used to exchange information electronically between ships, agents, ports, customs and other regulatory authorities during arrival, departure and port operations. It is a key technical foundation for paperless port clearance and trade facilitation. The series comprises ISO 28005-1:2013 Message structures and ISO 28005-2:2011 Core data elements, and is widely referenced by international maritime organisations and national single-window initiatives.

1. Background and Positioning of the Series 📌

International shipping has long required the submission of a large amount of arrival information to ports and competent authorities. Historically this relied on paper forms and facsimile exchanges, which suffered from inconsistent formats, duplicated data entry and poor timeliness. The ISO 28005 series was developed to address this problem: within the overall supply chain security management framework established by the ISO 28000 family, it focuses specifically on electronic data exchange between the ship and the shore. UK participation in the preparation was coordinated by Technical Committee SME/32 (Ships and marine technology — Steering committee).

The series is aligned with IMO recommendations on electronic ship clearance and provides a practical data specification supporting the electronic implementation of the Convention on Facilitation of International Maritime Traffic (FAL Convention). For shipping lines, agents and software vendors, conforming to BS ISO 28005 means the same messages and data definitions can be reused across different port systems, reducing duplicated development effort.

2. Series Structure and Document List 📋

3. Part 1 — Message Structures: Technical Highlights 🧩

BS ISO 28005-1:2013 begins with a conceptual system design that describes the general functional requirements of EPC software, including user role management, declaration workflow control, message generation and parsing, and status tracking. The standard then separates interactions into business-to-administration (B2A) and business-to-business (B2B) modes: B2A covers declarations and approvals exchanged between shipping parties and government authorities (customs, border control, port authorities), while B2B covers information exchange between commercial parties in the supply chain.

With respect to message structure, Part 1 defines the message frameworks corresponding to various port events — arrival, departure, crew and passenger lists, cargo manifests, dangerous goods declarations, and so on. It specifies the composition hierarchy, field organisation and message flow logic within a system, giving software developers a unified message-modelling language. The standard also clarifies the references between parts of a message so that different port implementations do not diverge into semantically identical but structurally different messages.

4. Part 2 — Core Data Elements: Technical Highlights 🗂️

BS ISO 28005-2:2011 focuses on defining the core data elements used in EPC messages. It first explains the scope of application of these elements, defines the types of data elements, and specifies the structure of the data element descriptions so that every element has a unique identifier, definition, data type, value constraints and usage notes. Typical core data elements include:

• Vessel identification: ship name, IMO number, call sign, flag state and ship type.
• Voyage and movement information: expected arrival/departure time, previous/next port and voyage number.
• Personnel and cargo information: crew and passenger list elements, cargo manifest elements, container numbers and dangerous goods information.
• Agent and contact information: declarant, agent, emergency contact and contact details.

By standardising data elements, EPC messages from different countries and systems can be aligned at the semantic level — a precondition for single-window and data-sharing implementations. Part 2 and Part 1 together form the complete EPC data specification; in development, care should be taken not to invent fields that are semantically identical to existing ones but differently named.

5. Engineering and Implementation Practice 🛠️

• 📋 System development: use the message framework of BS ISO 28005-1 as the skeleton and the data element dictionary of BS ISO 28005-2 as the field source, so that one development can be reused across multiple ports.
• 🔗 Single-window integration: national single windows generally accept declaration messages based on international standards; following BS ISO 28005 reduces integration effort with different regulatory platforms.
• 🧪 Data quality governance: build an enterprise data dictionary for core data elements and validate critical fields such as IMO number, timestamps and dangerous goods classification codes to reduce rejections and delays.
• 🔒 Security compliance: EPC messages contain sensitive commercial and identity data; transmission and storage should be protected using supply chain security (ISO 28000) and information security (ISO/IEC 27001) measures.

6. Frequently Asked Questions ❓