The Technology Asset Protection Association (TAPA) Asia has announced it has launched its Incident Information Service (IIS) marking the start of its freight crime database for members within the region. “This is a major step in providing our members with real time alerts of incidents, hijacks and crime trends,” said TAPA Asia chairman Jason Teo.

The Incident Information Service (IIS) is a database of freight crimes occurring against the industry and TAPA members. The database stores incidents such as crimes of hijacking, robbery, warehouse burglary, fraud, theft from facilities and thefts from and of the vehicle & load.

“According to the US FBI’s report in 2006, the cost of global cargo theft is conservatively estimated to be US$15- 30 billion a year and according to the European Union, the theft of high value, high risk products moving in supply chains in Europe costs businesses in excess of €8.2 billion a year,” said Teo. “The freight crime statistics for Asia are not known and the TAPA IIS offers an opportunity for its member to collect the loss data and provide an overview of the actual trends.”

The launch of the IIS comes at a time when freight crimes statistics have shown an increase in freight crime in Southern China with reported incidents of theft from vehicles whilst in motion. A number of high value losses of cargo had been reported to the TAPA Asia IIS service. Aside from email alerts to all members, the IIS service will provide data analysis enabling members to plan and mitigate risk, TAPA Asia said.