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The intended purpose of an intelligent transportation systems (ITS) project is to automate operations through device-to-device connectivity. These devices generally represent stakeholder’s endpoints and expose interfaces to automated operations. Current trends in communication allow more applications and devices to perform functions traditionally allocated to the transportation ITS infrastructure. This connected environment of industrial internet of things presents design challenges because of the diversity of stakeholders, interfaces, and the messages among them. This may require new ways in which ITS planning can handle the scale and complexity of these highly connected systems. This work focuses on the modeling of the architecture of a freight-focused ITS application, including maritime ports. The proposed model integrates stakeholders, behaviors, and messages using the Systems Modeling Language (SysML). The key contribution of this work is to demonstrate the creation of an executable SysML model for an ITS application without sacrificing the typical Systems Engineering Management Plan artifacts (e.g., requirements traceability matrices and interface control documents). At the same time, the proposed model provides a re-usable pattern to support parametric analysis of candidate architectures with respect to any measure of effectiveness. This allows establishing a single source of architecture definition and having multiple architecture specializations depending on the measure of effectiveness being evaluated. Recommendations for implementation and integration with existing ITS tools are provided.

Because container shipping is the most important means of transportation for international trade, the integration of port–hinterland operations is critical to improve the performance of global supply chains. Information and communication technology (ICT) can assist port stakeholders in addressing bottlenecks and streamlining processes at the port–hinterland interface. However, ICT adoption is often hindered by uncertainties concerning expected gains. This paper shows that the adoption of well-established technologies for supply chain management—namely barcode and global positioning systems technology—can bring significant performance gains for the port–hinterland interface, as evidenced by increased container cycle time, utilization rates, and total throughput. In addition, results show the presence of diminishing returns when implementing multiple readers in the system. System dynamics and a unique database containing real data from the Hutchinson Terminal at the Port of Veracruz, Mexico—selected because it is one of the most important ports in the Americas—are used to show the benefits that both local (nodes) and global (supply chain) levels can obtain from ICT adoption. The results of this research will help to reduce uncertainty and incentivize ICT adoption by port stakeholders, particularly in developing countries where research is lagging. The model proposed here can be applied to any port to analyze the impact of ICT adoption and provide support for the decision making of port stakeholders.